Portable Computing Magazine April 1984

44254 00002

From the people
who brought you...
Businssspai-f+

Five NEW programs

designed for the
businessperson.

Each on its own cassette
with interesting manual.

You have made BUSINESSPAK+ an over-
whelming success! Now, we are introducing
five new programs for the Model 100.

PCSG continues to be first in innovative
programming for the businessperson using
the TRS-80 Model 100 Computer.

Look at these five new programs.

DATA+ $59.95

With DATA+ the Model 100 becomes virtually a
true data base. You can input data rapidly from
a 16 field screen that you make yourself like our
PUT+. Here is the difference:

REVIEW / Using function key 1 you can recall
any record, by searching any field.

EDIT / Change or update any record you select,
instantly on the screen.

LIST / Using function key 5 you can print add-
ress labels, list records or selected fields of records
in columns or other configurations. You can
even pause, and reset left margins.

MERGE / Function key 6 lets you merge. You
can automatically print any fields of any records
into forms or letters, wherever you designate.

With all four of these functions you have full
search and selection capability.

With LIST and MERGE DATA+ remembers
your favorite formats, quickly defaulting to them
by simply pressing the ENTER key. The added
feature BUILD lets you build and print a file of
unrelated records that could not be selected
either alphabetically or numerically.

On cassette with excellent, easy to understand
manual.

TRS-80 Model 100 is a

trademark of Tandy Corporation

©1983 Portable Computer Support Group

TYPE+ $59.95

The Model 100 now becomes, with the addition
of any printer, the finest, most feature rich,
electronic typewriter available today. You can
type directly to the paper. (Some printers have
a one line buffer.)

SCREEN BUFFER / To allow you to edit before
printing, you can control the screen buffer from
1 character to the last line.

CENTER / Center on / center off controlled
with function keys.

MARGINS / Set margins with function keys.
Audible end of carriage, automatic carriage
return and function key Tab Set.

DIRECT CONTROL / If your printer responds to
backspace commands, you can backspace and
overstrike. Paper advances with carriage return.

With TYPE+, everything you print is stored
simultaneously in a RAM file, formatted as you
composed it. You can reprint instantly, or edit
it in the file. On cassette with excellent, easy
to understand manual.

TUTOR+ $29.95

Learn keyboard skills by playing a delightfully
exciting game. While experiencing the thrills of
a space invaders type game you become profic-
ient at manipulating the keyboard. A game that
forces you to learn touch typing, utilizing all
the keys. On cassette with excellent, easy to
understand manual.

PCSG provides hotline software support
for the Model 100. Give us a call at
1-214-351-0564.

SORT2+ $29.95

You can sort a file in place with SORT2+. It
consumes only 1 k free memory, while sorting file
in RAM you entered with PUT+ or DATA+. Our
original SORT+ allows you to sort from cassette,
but requires more memory while sorting. SORT2+
is for those times when memory or cassette sorting
is a problem. SORT2+ also has upper case fold,
and true numeric field sort. On cassette with
excellent, easy to understand manual.

TENKY+ $59.95

With TENKY+the numeric keypad on your Model
100 emulates both a ten-key desk calculator, and a
financial calculator. The right side of the screen
represents the tape, which can also be directed to
a file and/or a printer. Ten working registers are
visible on the left of the screen, each one function-
ing independently as a calculator with functions
including exponentiation and logarithms. Registers
are accessible from each other, including the tape
which stores up to 1 20 values, each associated with
a note of up to 26 characters.

Financial functions available at the touch of a
key include IRR, MIRR, and NPV on up to 1 20
cash flows, plus any of its six annuity variables
(n, PV, FV, PMT, i). Function key F2 gives a
printed amortization schedule, and businessmen
will love the breakeven analysis they can receive
simply by pressing function key FI .

Portable Computer Support Group is
pleased to offer these program additions.

We endeavor to continue as The Leaders in
Software for the Mode / 100.

RDRTABLE OOMRJTER UFFORT GROUP

11035 Harry Hines Blvd. No. 207, Dallas, TX 75229

MASTERCARD / VISA / COD

From Computer Plus to YOU . . . — >

PLUS after PLUS after PLUS

Color Computer II 16K $135
W/16K Ext. Basic $165
w/64K Ext. Basic $210

DMP120 $395
DMP200 $520

Color Computer Disk Drive
Drive 0 $329 Drive 1 $235

DWP210 $629

BIG SAVINGS ON A FULL COMPLEMENT OF RADIO SHACK COMPUTER PRODUCTS

COMPUTERS

Model 4 Portable

64K 2 Drives

1525

Pocket Computer 2

165

Pocket Computer 3

89

Pocket Computer 4

59

Model 2000 2 Drive

2299

Model 2000 W/Hard Disk

3599

Model 12 64K 1 Drive

2360

Model 12 64K 2 Drive

2950

Model 16B IDr 256K

3375

Model 16B 2Dr 256K

3965

MODEMS

Hayes Smartmodem II

225

Hayes Smartmodem 1200

539

Novation Smartcat 1200

410

Novation J-Cat

115

AC-3

129

DC Modem 1

89

DC Modem II

160

PRINTERS

Silver Reed EXP500 D.W.

425

Silver Reed EXP550 D.W.

515

DWP410

1159

DWP210

629

CGP115

159

CGP220 Ink Jet

545

DMP110

305

DMP420

735

DMP500

1115

DMP2100

1689

Toshiba 1340 (24 wire head)

779

Gemini 10X

289

Gemini 15X

409

Prowriter

359

Okidata

CALL

Epson

CALL

DISK DRIVES

Model 111/4 Drive 0

515

Model 111/4 Drive 1

195

Model 111/4 Drive 2 259

Model HIM Drive 3 229

Primary Hard Disk M12 2239

Primary Hard Disk Mill 1799

ETC.

CCR-81 Recorder 52

Cassette Tapes (10 Pk) 9.95

16K Rdm Chips 25

64K Ram Chips 62.95

Model 4 64K Upgrade Kit 79.95

Ml 00 Bar Code Reader 89

64K Printer Buffer 199

Printer Stand 25

Printer Cables
Printer Ribbons
Printer Paper
Computer Books

Radio Shack software 10% oft.

Send for complete listing of
brand name software and hardware.

CALL TOLL FREE
1 - 800 - 343-8124

• LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICES

• BEST POSSIBLE WARRANTY

• KNOWLEDGEABLE SALES STAFF

• TIMELY DELIVERY

• SHOPPING CONVENIENCE

IN MASSACHUSETTS CALL (617) 486-3193

s

TRS-80 Is a registered trademark of Tandy Corp.

PCM

The Portable Computing Magazine

Vol. 1, Issue 10 April 1984

Editor and Publisher

Lawrence C. Falk

Managing Editor Courtney Noe
Senior Editor Jim Reed
Technical Editor Danny Humphress
Assistant Editor Susan A. Remini
Submissions Editor Jutta Kapfhammer
Editorial Assistants Valarie Edwards,

Wendy Falk, Suzanne Kurowsky,

Lynn Miller, Shirley Morgan,

Noreen Morrison, Kevin Nickols
Contributing Editors Dan Downard,

Robert Frowenfeld, Jim Hawk, Richard White
Technical Assistant Ed Ellers
Art Director Jerry McKiernan
Assistant Art Director Sally Nichols
Designers Peggy Henry, Neal C. Lauron
Advertising Manager Charlotte Ford
(502) 228-4492

Advertising Assistant Debbie Baxter
General Manager Patricia H. Hirsch
Assistant General Manager for Finance
Donna Shuck
Bookkeeper Diane Moore
Advertising Accounts Doris Taylor
Dealer Accounts Judy Quashnock
Administrative Assistant To The Publisher
Marianne Booth
Director of Fulfillment Services
Bonnie Shepard

Assistant Customer Service Manager

Deidra Henry

Customer Service Representatives
Sandy Apple, Monica Wheat
Word Processor Manager Lynda Wilson
Research Assistants Wanda Perry,

Loretta Varda, Kara Voit
Dispatch Mark Herndon
Production Assistant Melba Smith

PCM is represented in the Eastern United States by
Garland Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 314, S.H.S., Dux-
bury, MA 02331, (617) 934-6464 or 934-6546. Advertisers
east of the Mississippi may contact them for further
information. Advertising and Marketing Office for the
Western states and provinces: Cindy Shackleford, direc-
tor, 12110 Meridian South, Suite 8, P.O. Box 73-578,
Puyallup, WA 98373-0578. Phone: (206) 848-7766.

PCM — The Portable Computing Magazine is published
every month of the year by FALSOFT, INC., 9529 U.S. High-
way 42, P.O. Box 209, Prospect, KY, 40059 Phone (502)
228-4492 PCM — The Portable Computing Magazine and

the PCM logotypes are ® trademarks of FALSOFT, Inc.

Second class postage pending at Prospect, KY and addi-
tional offices. POSTMASTER Send address changes to
PCM, P.O Box 209. Prospect, KY 40059 Forwarding Pos-
tage Guaranteed.

Entire contents © by FALSOFT, Inc., 1983. PCM — The
Portable Computing Magazine is intended for the private use
and pleasure of its subscribers and purchasers and repro-
duction by any means is prohibited. Use of information
herein is for the single end use of purchasers and any other
use is expressly prohibited. All programs herein are distrib-
uted in an “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind
whatsoever.

TRS-80, Model 100, and Portable Computer are ® trade-
marks of the Tandy Corp. CompuServe is a ® trademark of
CompuServe Inc.

Subscriptions to PCM — The Portable Computing Maga-
zine are $28 per year in the United States. Canadian and
Mexican rates are U.S. $35. Surface mail to other countries is
U.S. $64, air mail U.S. $85. All subscriptions begin with the
next available issue.

Payment accepted by VISA, MasterCard, American
Express, Cash, Check or Money Order in United States cur-
rency only.

Limited back issues are available. Please see notice for issues
which are in print and costs. Payment accepted by VISA, Master-
Card, American Express, Cash, Check or Money Order in U.S.
currency only.

Contents

Features

Byte-Sized Helper/ Jim Hawk 14

A file sizing program for PoCo

Scanning PCM’s Pages/ Danny Humphress 16

Bar code conversions of BASIC listings
are here to stay!

The Reporters’ Machine/ David W. Creed 25

A newspaperman looks at the Model
100

Menu Maker/ Vincent Lord 27

Quickly and easily add menus to your
programs with this subroutine

Small Talk/ Randy Graham 28

Telecommunicating with another small
computer, and more

Departments

BASIC Bytes/ Richard White 9

File transfer techniques

Letters To PCM 6

LPRINT/ Lawrence C. Falk 5

Editor’s notes

New Products 37

On The Road/ Robert Frowenfeld 12

A stock monitoring program

The Rackseller 38

Update 22

The airlines ban: two reports on late
developments

Reviews

The TRS-80 Model 2000 32

An in-depth report by Danny Humphress

Memory Expansion Module 37

Write+ 36

Advertisers Index

American Micro

Products 24

BT Enterprises 34

Chattanooga

Choo Choo 35

Computer Plus 3

Computer Solutions 10

Dennison Computer

Supplies BC

Dr. Preble’s Programs 6

Federal Hill Software 6

Portable Computer Support

Group IFC

Prickly-Pear Software 8

Purple Computing 13

Radio Shack 20-21

Silverware * 17

Skyline 7

Spectrum Projects IBC

York 10 15

Cover Illustration by Fred Crawford © 1984 by Falsoft, Inc.

Lprinl

Of Revolution
And Marriage

T his month’s issue marks some-
thing really special for PCM.
Pardon me if 1 sound excited
about what’s in the pages of this issue.

As you no doubt have gathered from
the cover, we have some really exciting
things to report in connection with bar
codes. And, of no less importance, we’re
beginning to see a new direction for
PCM that, 1 think, will greatly enhance
your own portable (and personal) com-
puting in the months and years ahead.
First things first.

We’re absolutely delighted to be the
first magazine in history to produce a
truly workable program for reading bar
codes into your computer. And, as a
part of that, we are printing a short
program that you can read right into
your Portable Computer with nothing
more than a bar code reader.

Of greater significance, however, is
the fact that we plan to print several
programs in bar code every month from
now on. What that means is that you
will — with the help of a $ 100 bar code
reader available from Radio Shack and
other sources — not have to type in
programs, but simply load them in by
skimming your bar code wand over the
codes in PCM\

This, 1 believe, is a revolutionary con-
cept in a computer magazine as far as we
know. About five years ago, one maga-
zine tried a bar code program employ-
ing an $800-$ 1,000 bar code reader.
There were hardware modifications, as
well. Here in PCM , all you need to do is
type in the bar code conversion pro-
gram and use it to read the codes for
other programs that we will publish.
And, there is one in this issue.

This means that, for the first time,
neither will you have to type in the pro-
grams yourself nor buy a separate ser-
vice that will give you the software on
disk or tape. We know that we are the
first regular magazine to make a con-
tinuing commitment to bar code-gener-
ated software. And we think that is
revolutionary! In addition, we believe it
will make your Portable Computer —
and PCM — more valuable than ever
before.

All this would not have been possible
without the hard work of Danny Hum-
phress, who joins our staff this month as
Technical Editor. Danny has a wealth
of experience as a programmer and
expert in a wide variety of computer
equipment — most of it from Radio
Shack. This represents but the first pro-
ject on which Danny will have direct
responsibility, in addition to providing
general technical expertise to PCM and
you, its reader.

We feel extremely proud to have
Danny join us. We believe his joining
the PCM staff will assist us in develop-
ing truly unique concepts as well as
affording us the opportunity to assist
you in using your Portable Computer to
its utmost.

You will no doubt notice that another
contribution Danny makes to these
pages this month is an in-depth review
of the Tandy 2000 computer. There is
more than just curiosity and inspection
of a new computer from Radio Shack
embodied here.

We view the Tandy 2000 as a natural
partner for the Portable Computer.
You may have read some of my com-

ments in earlier issues that 1 believe the
Portable Computer is being used by
many of you as a base-away-from-home
but that you, in effect, dump informa-
tion from your portable into another
computer when you get back to your
real “home.” While 1 think the Portable
is an ideal portable and, with the addi-
tion of the Disk/ Video interface (which
we featured exclusively on our cover a
month ago) a fine stand-alone system,
too, 1 see the Tandy 2000 as the natural
partner to the Portable.

That is the reason the review of the
2000 has more than casual interest to us
here and why we feature it this month.
But, more important, you will be seeing
more in the nature of this “marriage” of
what we consider two excellent compu-
ter systems.

Might 1 suggest that the Tandy 2000
is the perfect MS-DOS system to go
with your Portable Computer? It has far
more capabilities than does the IBM PC
and the cost is significantly lower. In
addition, it includes many of the fea-
tures for which you have to pay extra
with the IBM.

For instance: It just blows my mind
that you have to fork over extra cash to
get MS-DOS with the IBM. You get it
for no additional cost with the 2000 —
and the 2000 is still far lower in price!

No, we’re not going to stint the Port-
able Computer. But, you will see more
in the line of “marriage” of the Portable
and the 2000 in the future. The reason
for this is simply because we believe the
two systems are excellent ones which
deserve your careful consideration.

— Lonnie Falk

April 1984 PCM 5

Letters

A VALUABLE RETURN

Editor:

I would like to thank you for the fine job
you are doing with PCM. I use my M100
daily and want to see all the information and
support 1 can.

The reason 1 am writing, however, is in
reference to the letter written by A.W.
Goldman of Newton, Mass., which appeared
on Page 6 of the February 1984 issue. His
information is fantastic and is exactly what 1
am looking for (or part of it anyway). How-
ever, I would like to clarify a point he made
concerning the ASC(x) function. He said
that it did not return values for comma,
quotes, etc. If you run the following pro-
grams I think you will soon see that he was
running into the error trapping inherent in
the INPUT command. The second program
uses IN KEYS and returns all values I have
tried.

10 INPUT D$

20 ?ASC(D$)

30 GOTO 10

10 D$=INKEY$:IFD$— “’’GOTO 10

20 ?ASC(D$)

30 GOTO 10

Rick McLaughlin
Battle Creek, Ml

BLUEGRASS BBS

Editor:

If you know of any bulletin boards in the
606 area code, I would appreciate knowing
about them. The information age seems to
have started somewhat secretly here in Ken-
tucky.

Matthew' L. Mooney
Lexington, KY

Editor’s Note: It did, at least where
606 area code bulletin boards are con-
cerned. We couldn V find any. Perhaps
someone else might be able to help ?

THE INVISIBLE FILE

Editor:

I wish to compliment Ronald Paludan
upon his excellent program, Invisible Files ,
in the February issue. I have been looking
for such a utility and this one which I call
II ID FI L works well.

It is inconvenient in one case, however.
The outstanding check file, OUTCHK.DO ,
of my personal checking account program
hides beautifully with HIDFIL but, when it
is recorded back to RAM at the end of the
program, it becomes visible again. This
requires the loading and running of HIDFIL

to return its status to invisible.

To correct this inconvenience 1 changed
Mr. Paludan’s program into the subroutine,
HIDSUB , and merged it with the personal
checking account program. 1 changed the
line in this program which reads “:CLOSE:
END” to “:CLOSE:Z2$=“OUTCH K.DO”:
GOS U B7920: EN D’\

The outstanding check file returns to its
invisible status automatically now.

Note: The REM statements in the subrou-
tine can be deleted to save memory.

7900 REM HID-A-FILE SUBROUTINE,
HIDSUB. DO

7910 REM Z2S MU ST CONTAIN 6 CHAR
ACTER FI LESPEC( INSERT SPACES IF
NECESSARY) PLUS k DO’(NO PERIOD)
7915 REM VARIABLES USED: Z2$,ZI,
Z2,Z3,Z4

7920 FORZ3=63933T06413ISTEPl 1:21 =
1 :F0RZ4=1T06

7930 IFMID$(Z2$,Z4,l)OCHR$(PEEK(
Z3TZ4 1 ))THENZ1=0
7940 N EXTZ4: 1 FZ I =0TH EN 7980
7950 Z2=Z3 3

7960 POKEZ2,PEEK(Z2)XOR8

7970 RETURN

7980 N EXTZ3: R ETU R N

Nathaniel F. Ireland
Marlow , NH

The Preble NavComp

Two Aviation Programs in one package!

NavPIn

for Flight Planning

NavAid

for Realtime Navigation

‘Creates a complete Navi-
gation Log.

‘Saves the entire Route of Flight
for future flights. Just enter new
weather and performance data.

‘Provides all the standard Navi-
gation Data.

‘Compensates for Climbs and
Descents.

‘Can accept nautical or statute
measurements.

‘Has many error prevention
features.

‘Computes the effects of Density
Altitude, Wind Drift and Mag-
netic Variation on True Air-
speed, Ground Speed, Head-
ings. ETA's and ETE’s

‘Tracks your flight in Real Time.

‘Lets you modify Flight Data as
necessary,

'Has incredible graphic displays
of Position, Fuel Burn and
More!

‘Can update position using VOR
intersections.

‘Has Cursor selectable menu of
functions.

‘Can be turned off and on in mid-
flight without loss of data.

‘Has Interupt Function Keys for
check point passage, VOR Inter-
section Display, Incremental
Position Update, Ground Speed
Update and Position Update by
VOR Reference!

—The Preble NavComp: Self-prompting and user friendly!

— The Preble NavComp: Created by a Certificated Flight Instructor for
pilots who demand excellence!

—The Preble NavComp And the TRS80 Model 1 00: An unprecedented
partnership made FOR the HEAVENS.

The Preble NavComp is only $49.95 —

Visa and MasterCard accepted.

Shipping and Handling $1 .50 — $5.00 to
foreign points

A TRS80 Model 100 with at least 16K is
required.

Order From: Dr. Preble’s Programs; 6540 Outer
Loop; Louisville, KY 40228 (502) 241-6474

233

The Handicapper ^

Use the power and portability of your Model 100 to
improve your performance at the track— and we mean
at the track! The Handicapper comes with separate
programs for thoroughbred and harness tracks that
apply sound handicapping techniques to produce
rankings for the horses in each race. Use information
readily available in the Racing Form or harness track
program. Factors include speed, distance, track condi
tion, post position, past performance, jockey or driv-
er's record and other attributes. Use it at home the
night before or tote it with you to the track and hand-
icap between races! Handicap an entire race in a few
minutes and a whole card in less than an hour! List
rankings to screen or printer. 24K version even builds a
RAM file for the entire card! Includes harness and thor-
oughbred programs, complete documentation and
betting guide. State memory requirement when
ordering. Only $49.95.

Federal Hill Software
825 William St.
Baltimore, Md. 21230

6 PCM April 1984

Ask your dealer for the Porta™ series
from Skyline— to help you work faster and better!

PortaCalc™ — Model 100 “electronic spreadsheet” with 14 column by 26 row workspace!
Full use of the built-in function keys to save, load, screen print, report print, or to look
behind the data at the formulas in use. HpJ

Full arithmetic operators including exponentiation, absolute value, integer, summation,
and averaging. Calculations are done to 14 digits of precision and displayed up to 9
digits. User selectable decimal place from none through seven— not just one, two, or
floating! Formula replication is included to allow fast creation of worksheets.

Worksheets may be saved, loaded, or merged using the computer’s memory or
cassette. Often used templates can be saved in memory for instant recall.

Two powerful utility programs are included with PortaCalc at no extra
charge! PortaDex™ is a data exchange program that allows reformatting
PortaCalc files into the DIF format used by VisiCalc. PortaPrint™ is an
enhancement to the Model 100’s text editor, adding the ability to adjust
left, right, and top margins, and page length. Page numbering, headers,
centered lines, flush right justification, new page control, and more.

Comes with extensive documentation in padded 3-ring binder. Includes
tutorial, detailed reference section, and executive level sample templates.

Fully illustrated with screen prints, examples, and hints.

PortaStat™ — Correlation, regression analysis, and descriptive statistics
package, designed to be a working tool for today’s businessman.

Data can be input from cassette, memory, or keyboard. Interactive with
PortaCalc data files! Thoroughly documented, includes tutorial.

PortaFin" —Present value, net present value, future value, annuities,
interest factors, loan constants, internal rate of return and more! This user-
friendly package prompts you for the needed input data, then gives you
the answer to your loan or investment problem! Interactive with PortaCalc
files, allowing you to “read” cash flow data from memory. Keyboard or
cassette input also available.

PortaMax M — The powerful ‘simplex’ method of linear programming. Find
the optimum ‘mix’ for a given set of constraints. Interacts with PortaCalc
files to avoid time-wasting repetitive data entry. Tutorial, examples, and
bibliography included.

PortaFolio™ — Stock and bond valuation, betas, Macaulay’s duration, yield
to maturity, bond swap calculations, and much more. All in an easy to use
program, interactive with PortaCalc data files. Supplied with comprehensive
instructions and reference manual.

All Porta series programs are supplied on cassette and require 24K RAM.
Pricing — PortaCalc is $69.95, all others are $44.95 each.

If ordering direct, add $2.00 shipping and handling per order.

Dealer inquires invited.

VISA

Model 100 is a trademark of Tandy Corp VisiCalc is a trademark of VisiCorp DIF is a trademai k of Software A-ts

4510 W. Irving Park Rd. • Chicago, IL 60641 • (312) 286-0762

Porta Calc

PRICKLY-PEAR SOFTWARE

QUALITY PROGRAMS FOR YOUR MODEL 100

Monsters & Magic

The most realistic fantasy role-playing game yet for the
ColorComputer. You start out by rolling upyourcharacter’s
basic ability scores and buying equipment. When you are
ready it’s into the dungeon. Your character starts at first
level, but can rise in levels by garnering experience in the
fray. If you have role-played fantasy games you will be
amazed at the realism of the combat system. Armor class,
initiative, and damage by weapon type are all included,
with over 50 different monsters tofight- each with it’s own
abilities. As you rise in level you can win treasure and find
magic weapons and spells - if you live!! You set the game
length by telling how many monsters you want to fight
before you reach your final battle to the death against the
powerful Dungeon Lord. There are 1000+ place descrip-
tion combinations in this text based game, and real excite-
ment in every one! This is a fantasy simulation, and is truly
not like any adventure game you have ever seen. For 1
player. $19.95 tape— 24K

Astrology

Truly a classic, this program will accurately cast your
complete horoscope. You just enter the date, time, and
place of birth. The sun sign, rising sign, mid heaven (MC),
lunar nodes, and planetary influences including houses
and aspects between the planets will all be calculated, and
a full chart drawn. You can also do progressed charts and
transits. It will even tell you the day of the week you were
born. The accompanying book will help you interpret this
chart of your horoscope. The extent of the documentation
is tremendous, even by our exceptionally high standards,
and no previous knowledge of the subject is required. You
can share in this wisdom which has been used for thou-
sands of years in many cultures. This program was written
by a professional Astrologer. $34.95 tape — 16K

A simulation for 1 to 4 persons. Each begins as a land-
owner, and by farming their land, buying and selling land,
expanding their fishing fleet, building on to their manu-
factory, increasing their population, equiping and training
more soldiers, and regulating theirtaxes, each playertries
to increase their economic power and rank until one
becomes ruler over all. But beware plagues, rats, raiders,
revolts, bad weather, and other misfortunes which may lie
along the road to success. As you progress, see the map of
your holdings increase. Playable in 1 to 2 hours, and
different every time, you may have an addiction problem.
$19.95 tape — 24K

If you ever wanted to try a life of crime, this is your chance.
You will start out as a Punk, but by using brains, and a little
muscle, you can rise to become a Hood, Runner, Bookie,
Torpedo, Fence, Kingpin, or win by becoming Syndicate
Boss. Indulge yourself. Bribe a judge, or the District
Attorney. Pay off the Cops. Take out a contract on another
player, but watch out, they may be after you. Buy trucking
companies, bootleg operations, houses of ill fame, but
remember, if you get caught, you may do some hard time.
Doyou have what ittakes to take over? Thisgame will keep
you close to your rod, get you thinking about bulletproof
glass in your car, and definitely bring out the worst in you,
but you’ll love every minute of it. For 2 to 6 players, takes
about 2 hours to play. Every game is excitingly different.
$19.95 tape — 24K

Your personal check is welcome - no delay. Include
$1.50 shipping for each program ordered. (Shipping free
on $50.00 or larger orders). AZ residents add 7% sales
tax. Orders shipped within two days.

Stocked by Quality Dealers, or

Send Order To: PRICKLY-PEAR SOFTWARE

9234 E. 30th Street

/'■ 'x' '\

Tucson, Arizona 85710

MortwCord

(602) 886-1505

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Bade Bytes

Groundwork For
Future File Handling

By Richard A. White
PCM Contributing Editor

M odel 100 provides a rich, and
perhaps confusing, selection
of file options. Now that the
disk drive has arrived, even more options
will be available. It seldom hurts to get
the basics down before tackling the
advanced material. This month we will
lay some groundwork that you can
build on in the future.

A computer file is a block of compu-
ter readable data that can range in size
from zero to the capacity of the storage
device. A program in RAM is a file.
Notes on yesterday’s sales meeting are
also a file. The distinction between these
files is that one is executable code and
the other is information that was gen-
erated by a program and can be read
and used by that program. Right now I
have over a dozen files stored in my
M 100. However, I won’t want most of
those files in memory in the future,
though some I will want to keep some-
where.

File handling is really file transfer.
T ransfer may be cither into or out of the
computer. Transfer will be to or from
some device. The computer really only
cares about the input and output ports
the various devices use. However, the

Dick White has been programming in
BASIC for over three years, and has a
number of programs on the market for
the Color Computer. He is also a col-
umnist for the Rainbow , PCM’s sister
publication, and is a member of CIN-
TUG, the Cincinnati TRS-80 Users'
Group .

ports are designed for specific devices. If
you write code that causes data to be
sent to the cassette port, BASIC figures
you are smart enough to have the re-
corder attached and ready to run before
you give the signal to go. There are six
devices defined in the basic M100, the
expansion interface and disk drive will
add more. For now we will neglect the
disk until more readers, including me,
own disks.

SAVE is one of the simplest com-
mands. It sends the program currently
loaded in BASIC to a specified device.
The syntax is SAVE “device:filename”
or SAVE “dcvice:configuration”. The
device is identified by a three-letter
abbreviation that is used with SAVE
and with the other file commands in the
M 100.

LCD defines the liquid crystal dis-
play. LPT defines the line printer. Since
the file is output only to these devices
and is not saved in some sort of memory,
no file name is used. So, the commands
are simply SAVE“LCD:”, which does
the same thing as LIST and SAVE
“LPT:’\ which is the same as LUST.

COM routes the file to the RS-232
port while MDM specifies the M100
built-in modem. Again, the file is output
only and no file name is used. But, there
is need to configure the ports to match
the receiving computer as you do in
TELCOM. The configuration consists
of a five character string for COM or a
four character string with MDM. MDM
automatically sets the Baud rate to 300,
which cannot be changed and is not

included in the configuration string.
Following are the options for each
character in the order of their appear-
ance in the configuration string.

r - Baud Rate where 1=75; 2=1 10; 3=
300; 6=1200; 5=1200; 6=2400; 7=
4800: 8=9600; 9=19200. Remember
that r is specified for COM but not
for MDM.

w - Word Length where 6=six bits; 7=
seven bits; and 8=eight bits. Seven-
or eight-bit words are most common,
p - Parity is a method of detecting trans-
mission errors by setting one bit
according to certain rules and check-
ing that bit versus a calculation of
what it should be by the receiving
computer. Parity may be E (even), O
(odd), I (ignored) or N (none),
b - Stop Bits serve to keep the sending
and receiving computers syncron-
ized. l=one stop bit, 2=two stop bits
with one stop bit being most com-
mon.

s - Defines XON/XOFF status. When
status is E=Enablc, M!00 will look
for characters from the receiving
computer to tell it when to send and
when not to send. D=Disable which
turns the function off.

SAVE “MDM:7N1E” sends the cur-
rent program out the modem with a
seven-bit word, no parity, one stop bit
and the XON/XOFF test working.
SAVE “COM:58E2D” sends the current
program out the RS-232 port at 1200
Baud with an eight-bit word, even par-
ity, two stop bits and XON/XOFF

April 1984 PCM 9

disabled.

Finally, we come to the devices w hich
BASIC expects to save the program for
later recall, and therefore, requires that
you provide a name under which to file
the program. RAM is the memory in
your M 100. CAS sends the program to
the cassette recorder and BASIC assumes
you have the recorder setup and ready
to record. The file name must start with
a letter and may be up to six characters
long. If you are filing to RAM, you may
add a two character extension such as
BA or .DO. If no extension is specified,
. BA is applied. Typical statements would
be SAVE 4 4 C A S : M Y P R O G ” or SAVE
“RAM: MY PROG. BA”. SAVE “MY-
PROG” sends the program to the default
device, RAM, with the default exten-
sion .BA.

Except for LCD and LPT, SAVE as
we have used it up to now, sends a byte-
by-byte copy of the current program in
BASIC to the specified device. The pro-
gram in memory is different than you
see it listed. Each keyword is replaced
w ith a one- or two-character token. This
is a shorthand that saves memory and
speeds execution. Each time you enter a
line of BASIC, you will notice a short

delay as BASIC “tokenizes” the line. If
you have a number of lines in the edit
mode, tokenizing takes more time and
you get the wait message so you will
expect a longer delay. Though the BASIC
program may be general enough to run
on a number of computers with little
change, it will be tokenized differently
on each. A tokenized BASIC program
file for one computer is worthless in
another. However, an ASCII file of the
program can be transported from one
computer to another through the RS-
232 port or through the modem and
telephone. SAVE 44 COM:58El E”,A
saves the program as ASCII characters
to the RS-232, while SAVE 44 MDM:
7N1E”,A does the same using the mo-
dem. SAVE 44 RAM:M YPROG.DO”,A
saves the program to RAM in ASCII
format. You then can load it into TEXT ,
send it using TELCOM or MERGE it
into another program.

1 have noticed that when 1 say ASCII
to many users, 1 get a blank stare. Most
of you know that a computer can only
deal with numbers, and binary numbers
at that. But a computer can convert
binary to decimal or Hex numbers for
human comsumption. Therefore, char-

acters are represented in computer mem-
ory by specified numbers. The ASCII
Character Code Table, Page 21 1 in your
manual defines which number stands
for which character. Of course, you can
ask your M 100 by going into BASIC' and
typing say ?ASC( 44 A”). M100 will re-
spond with 65 which is the ASCII code
fora capital A. So, an ASCII SAVE of a
program simply untokenizes the pro-
gram and stores it like a text file using
ASCII values to represent each char-
acter.

Machine language files can be saved
to RAM or CAS only using SAVEM.
However, you need to know the start
address and end addresses in memory
and the entry or execution address if it is
different from the start address. Syntax
is SAVEM “CAS or RAMTilenamc”,
start address, end address, entry address.
You can omit the entry address and the
start address will be used. Omit the
device name and RAM will be used.

CSAVE and CSAVEM arc shorthand
commands to SAVE to the cassette.
You still provide a file name and in the
case of CSAVEM the addresses. Exam-
ples are CSAVE 44 M YPRCXT, CSAVE
44 M YPROG”,A and CSAVEM “MY-

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PROG",50000, 55678,50020.

LOAD brings a BASIC program from
RAM, CAS, COM or MDM into BASIC,
erasing any program that was there
before. Its syntax and options arc nearly
identical with SAVE, c.g. LOAD “de-
vice:filename or configuration'', R. You
do not tell LOAD whether the file is
ASCI I and must be tokenized or if it is
tokenized and can be read in directly.
basic: figures this out for you. The R
suffix is optional. If R is there, BASIC
will run the program as soon as it is
loaded. If no device is specified, the
RAM default is used.

LOADM“RAM or CAS:filename"
loads a machine language program to
the memory area it was saved from. This
can present problems if some other file
is already occupying that space. A neat
feature is that BASIC prints out the start,
end and entry address, and it loads the
file. If device is omitted, RAM is the
default. The default extension for a
machine language program is . CO , but
this is optional if the program was saved
with this extension. If some other exten-
sion was used to save the program, the
extension must be specified so BASIC
can find the program. This same is true
when you load a BASIC program.

CLOAD“MYPROG"and CLOADM
“MY PROG" are shorthand versions of
LOAD“CAS:M YPROC’and LOADM
“CAS: MY PROG."

R UN may be substituted for LOAD
saving one key stroke. It will both
load and RUN the program, but this
was accomplished by using the ,R suffix
with the LOAD command. With RUN,
the ,R has a different meaning than with
LOAD. If you RUN “MYPROG", BAS-
IC first closes all currently open files. If
you RUN “MYPROG", R BASIC leaves
all files open. Extension and configura-
tion options are the same as we dis-
cussed above.

RUNM “CAS or RAM:filename"
loads and executes a machine language
program.

As you build an inventory of pro-
grams and program modules, you will
find that it is possible to save considera-
ble programming and debugging time
by taking code from one program and
using it in another. Of course, you could
type the code in, but it may be easier to
merge the BASIC routine into your cur-
rent program. You have to do some pre-
work. First, edit your module to get rid
of unneeded code. Then check line
numbers. If the same line number exists
in the current program and in the one

being merged in, the line in the merging
program will substitute for the one in
the current program. If you plan your
merges before you start you can assure
that line number conflicts do not exist.
Then check that line numbers in GOTOs,
GOSUBs and after THEN and ELSE
refer to existing lines in the merged pro-
gram and that these lines are where you
really want the program to go. Finally,
you need to save the module you are
going to merge in ASCII format.

Now you are ready to make the
merge. Load the base program into
BASIC. Then merge using MERGE “de-
vice:filenamc or configuration". Device
options arc RAM, CAS, COM, and
MDM. RAM is the default. Configura-
tion for COM or MDM arc as we dis-
cussed before. N o extension is used with
CAS, but one may be important coming
from RAM. Suppose, you have the
program “PR INTR. BA" in memory and
have edited it to be merged in. Say you
called the ASCII save PR1NTR.DO , a
normal default for an ASCII save. If
you MERGE “PRINTR", BASIC will
find PRINTR. BA first, try to merge it
and cause an error. MERGE “PR1NT-
R.DO" solves the problem.

Data files use a different set of com-
mands than are used to save programs,
but file name and configuration options
are handled in the same w'ay. First, it is
necessary to open the file using the
statement OPEN “device:filename or
configuration" FOR mode AS file num-
ber. Something new is added in the form
of mode and file number. Device file-
name and configuration are exactly the
same as in program handling. OPEN
allocates a buffer or section of memory
for use by the specified device and file
number is the number assigned to that
buffer. Files may be opened and closed
independently of each other and a num-
ber may be open at any time. However,
BASIC expects that only one file will be
open at a time unless MAXFILES is
reset to the actual number of file you
will have open concurrently.

There are three modes — output,
input and append. In output mode, data
is written sequentually to the file, start-
ing at the beginning of the file. Append
is a special output to an existing file,
where data is added to the end of the
file. Input reads data in from an existing
file starting at its beginning. Append
only works with RAM files. LCD and
LPT can only be output files.

Once you open a file for output or
append, you PRINT data to it. For

example, PRINT #1 , A$,A,B sends the
string AS and values for A and B to the
file. The delimiters and “;" work just
as they do with a PRINT or LPR1NT
statement. The comma tabs, or advan-
ces, the cursor to the next print zone
(each print zone is 15 characters long),
while the semicolon holds the cursor at
the space after the last character has
printed and no character separates data
from two variables. This can cause a
problem when inputting data back from
a file. If only one variable is used in each
PRINT # statement, a carriage return
w ill separate each data item and you are
assured that data will be read back in
exactly as it was sent out. Best practice
for the above example would be PRINT
#1, AS: PRINT #1. A: PRINT #1, B.

Data is recovered from a file using
INPUT # file number, variable list, or
INPUTS (numeric expression, file num-
ber). File number refers back to the
buffer assigned in the OPEN statement.
Data is pulled from the buffer into vari-
ables when INPUT # is used. The varia-
ble types must be assigned in the same
order as data was saved to the file, but
need not have the same names as the
variables were saved from. The manual
says that the data in the file must be
separated by commas, which is curious
since there are strong indications under
the PRINT # write-up that data is best
separated by spaces. The descriptions of
data file format describe a file identical
with a Color Computer disk file, and
practices which apply there should w'ork
w'ith M 100. If data is printed in a file as
single print statements, as outlined in
the previous paragraph, an INPUT #1,
A$, A, B will properly recover it.

I NPUTS gets a specified (numeric ex-
pression) number of characters from
a particular file (file number). To use it
effectively, you need to tightly control
how you make the file in the first place.
If you PRINT # using the comma for
file formatting, then you can divide the
file into data blocks that are multiples of
15. AS = 1NPUT( 15,1 ) will get 15 char-
acters from buffer#! . If these characters
are storing a number and not a charac-
ter string, vou recover the number using
A = VAL(AS).

The foregoing discussion of files only
scratches the surface. In addition to the
few “watch-outs" and “how-tos," there
are a few more “do’s" and “don'ts" that
are not covered in the manuals or w'hich
do not carry over from other machines.

I will plan to deal with some of these in a
future column.

April 1984 PCM 11

On The Road

A New Stock Option:
Monitoring Daily
Fluctuations
With TRACK. BA

By Robert Frowenfeld
PCM Contributing Editor

A few months ago 1 wrote a pro-
gram to help PCMers keep track
of stocks and bonds. It met with
such resounding acceptance that I have
decided to write a sequel. This month
we're going On The Road with a pro-
gram to help you monitor the daily fluc-
tuations in stock prices. Using some of
the graphics capabilities of your Model
100, this program will allow you to plot
the daily closing price of any stock (or
stocks) you choose.

I named this program TRACK. BA
since 1 use it to keep track of the daily
activity of my securities. The operation
of the program is very simple. Option #1
from the main menu permits you to
enter the date and closing price of any

(Robert Frowenfeld owns his own
computer programming firm in Louis-
ville, Ky., and has completed his gradu-
ate course work in computer science at
the University of Louisville.)

stock. The program asks you for the
stock symbol (which can be entered in
either upper- or lowercase characters)
and proceeds to continually ask for a
date and closing price combination until
you press the FI key when prompted for
the date. The nice thing about this pro-
gram is that you don't have to type in all
the prices at one time since the program
appends the data at the end of the data
file each time it is run. When entering
the date, use the format mm/dd\ for
example, April 19 would be entered as
04/19, etc.

1 ncidentally, the data for each stock is
stored in a text file named with the
stock's ticker symbol. For example,
Tandy Corporation would be stored in
the text file TAN. DO. Verbatim Corpo-
ration would be stored in VRB. DO, etc.
That makes it handy, for in case you
make a mistake, you can always go into
the Model 100's trusty text editor and
make any needed corrections.

Now for the fun part plotting.

When you choose option #2 from the
main menu you are asked to enter the
particular stock you want to plot. The
program checks to see if a data file with
the chosen name exists and, if it does
not, lets you know with a message and
the Model 100's characteristic BEEP. If
the data file does exist, a neatly drawn
graph will appear on your Model 100's
display. One of the nice features of this
program is the fact that no matter what
the range of data over the course of the
graph, the program will automatically
scale the Y-axis accordingly. Also, the
program will note the dates along the
X-axis in approximately six-week in-
tervals.

This program will work fine until you
run out of room on the X-axis which
will be about 220 days from now. At an
average of five stock trading days per
week, that's about 44 weeks. By then I’ll
have figured out a way to start plotting
at a different point. But till then —
happy trading!

The listing:

1 MAXFI LES=2: CLEAR lflBBsDEFINT I — N : DEFST
R A , R , U

2 BL*=STRING$ (38, n M )

5 ES$=CHR$ (27) : R=ES*+ " p " : U=ES$+ " q " ! GOTO
35

6 LINEINPUT INI: X = VAL ( INI) : IF IN$<> ,,n TH
EN Y=ASC( INI) :RETURN ELSE RETURN

35 '

50 DATA "Enter Daily Pri ces" , "Graph Dail
y Pri ces" , "End Program"

52 FOR 1 = 1 TO 3 s READ M*(I):NEXT I

60 KEY 1 , CHRI ( 1 ) + CHRI (13)

100 CLS: CLOSE: PRINT@51," PCM Stock Tracke
r"

105 FOR 1=1 TO 3:PRINT6(I+2)#4B+ll,Rj I ; U
" "Ml ( I ) ; : NEXT 1

120 PR I NT@29 1 , "Select: " ; : A= I NPUT* ( 1 ) : X =
VAL ( A) : IF X<1 OR X>3 THEN 100 ELSE FX = X
130 PRINT USI NG" # " ; X ;

140 ON FX GOTO 200,300,400
200 'enter

210 CLSsGOSUB 500 s I F ER = 1 THEN 100
220 GOSUB 700

12 PCM April 1984

230 PRINT@137,;STRING#(15," ");:PRINT@13
7 , " " ; : GOSUB 6 s IF Y=1 OR IN#=" H THEN 100
240 GOSUB 800: IF ER=1 THEN BEEP: GOTO 230
250 PRINTS177, STRING# (15," ” ) ; sPRINT @17
7, : GOSUB 6
260 PR=X

270 PR I NT# 1 , USING"##/## ###.##"; MN ; DY ; PR
280 GOTO 220
300 'graph

305 CLS : GOSUB 500: I F ER = 1 THEN 100
310 CLS:F'RINT@15, "Stock: "R" "FI#" “Uj
315 LINE (20, 5) -(20,52) : LINE (20, 52) -(235,
52)

320 GOSUB 900: GOSUB 1000
330 FOR 1 = 1 TO 6 : PR I NT @280-40* I , US I NG " #
##":LO+(I-l)*IC; : LINE (18, 60-1*8) -(20, 60-
1*8) : NEXT I

340 CLOSE : OPEN FI# FOR INPUT AS 1 : I X=20

345 OX=0: OY=0

350 IF EOF ( 1 ) THEN 399

360 INPUT #1,A#:X=VAL(MID#(A#,6))

365 Y=52-(X-L0)/IC*8:X=IX

370 PSET(INT(X) , INT(Y) ) : IF OXO0 THEN LI

NE (OX , OY) - ( X , Y )

380 IX = IX + 1:0X = X:0Y = Y: IZ = IX-21: IF I NT ( I Z
/36 ) *36= I Z THEN GOSUB 600
385 GOTO 350

399 A#=INPUT# ( 1 ) : RUN

400 'end

410 CLS:MENU

500 select stock

505 ON ERROR GOTO 580

510 CLS: PRINT @50, R" "M#(FX)" "U;:PRINT@
130, "Enter Stock ID:

520 GOSUB 6: IF Y=1 OR IN#="" THEN ER=1:R
ETURN

525 FOR 1 = 1 TO LEN ( IN#) : J=A5C (MID# ( IN# , I
, 1 ) ) : IF J >97 THEN MID# ( IN# , 1 , 1 ) =CHR# ( J-3
2)

526 NEXT I

530 F I #= I N# : ON FX GOTO 540,550

540 OPEN F I #+ " . do" FOR APPEND AS 1 : GOTO

560

550 OPEN F I # + " . d o " FOR INPUT AS 1

560 ON ERROR GOTO 0: RETURN

5B0 IF ERR=52 AND ERL=550 THEN GOSUB 590

: E R = 1 : RETURN ELSE STOP

590 BEEP: PRINT@290, "STOCK DOES NOT EXIST

" ! : FOR 1=1 TO 1 000 : NEXT I : RETURN

600 print date on graph

610 IF I X >25 THEN LINE ( IX ,52) -< IX , 54)

620 P = I X- 1 5 : P = 280+F‘/6

630 PR I NT@P , " " ; : PR I NT USING"##" ; VAL <A#> ;
:F'RINT"/";:J = VAL(MID$(A#,4 2> , 2) ) : IF J< 1 0 T
HEN PRINT USING"#" ; J ; ELSE PRINT USING"#
# " ; J :

640 RETURN
700 'daily input

710 CLS: PRINT @50, R" Daily Input for: "F
I#" "U

720 PRINT@130, "Date : ";:PRINT @170, "Pri
c e : " ;

730 F'RINT@290, "Press "R" FI "U" to exit"

J

740 RETURN
800 'check date

805 J = INSTR(IN#, "/") : IF J<2 OR J>3 OR LE
N ( IN#) <3 OR LEN (IN#) >5 THEN ER= 1 : RETURN
810 ER = 0: IF X<1 OR X > 1 2 THEN ER= 1 : RETURN
820 MN = X: DY=VAL (MID# ( IN#, J + l ) ) : IF DY<1 0
R D Y > 3 1 THEN ER = 1: RETURN
830 RETURN

900 ’determine y-axis hi & lo

910 CLOSE:OPEN FI# FOR INPUT AS 1

920 L0 = 999 : H 1=0

930 IF EOF ( 1 ) THEN RETURN

940 INPUT #1,A#:X=VAL(MID#(A#,6>>

950 IF X<LO THEN LO=X
960 IF X > H I THEN H I = X
970 GOTO 930

1000 IF H I -L0< = 5 THEN IC=1:RETURN
1010 IF HI-LQO10 THEN I C=2: L0= I NT ( LO/2 )
*2: RETURN

1020 IF H I -L0< = 25 THEN IC = 5: L0= I NT (LO/5)
*5 : RETURN

1030 IF HI-LO< = 50 THEN I C = 1 0 : L0 = I NT ( LO/ 1
0 ) * 1 0 : RETURN

1040 IC=20:LO=INT (LO/20) *20: RETURN nrert

MEMORY

MODULES

nt via UPS included in price.
> Test program $15. (Cassette)

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PCM

April 1984 PCM 13

Try This

Byte-Counting Utility
— Just For Size

By Jim Hawk
PCM Contributing Editor

O ne of the first things 1 remember
doing with my 100 when 1 got it
home was to start typing a test
file, then going to the menu to see how
much the "Bytes free” number changed.
And to find out how big my address file
had become, 1 used to save it on cassette
tape, then after marking down the cur-
rent "bytes” number I'd "Kill” ADRS
and check the number again. Crude, but
effective until I found a much easier
way.

Fve tried several file-sizing programs
for the 100 and each seemed to have its
deficiencies. One would give a readout
of only the first four letters of a file-
name, and the byte count was slightly
off my "kill file then subtract” method.
Another would claim bizarre sizes for
machine-language files: 53610, for ex-
ample (which, by the way, is the memory
"address” number). But this program

(Jim Hawk has been working in radio
news for the past 12 years and has a
science and electronics background. He
also does free-lance writing in Washing-
ton, D.C.)

rectifies all those problems and adds a
few embelishments. It was written by
Richard Robinson and first appeared in
the December 1983 issue of TRS-80
Microcomputer News , the Tandy pub-
lication dealing with their whole line.

“ . . . use the bench-
mark of dividing by
1,000 to figure [file
length] out in double-
spaced pages, or
divide by 2,000 for
single-spaced
estimates.”

But the first article had a bug in it, and a
corrected version ran hidden in the back
pages of the next issue. We thought it
was so useful, PCM readers should have
a better crack at it.

Using the program

Once you've correctly typed-in the

program listing, all you need to do is
save it to a filename of your choice — 1
use FLSZE. That way you only need
select it on the menu and hit ENTER.
Since this program takes up only 614
bytes of space, it can easily be left in
memory at all times. The initial display
is the first 1 6 filenames, their extensions
and the byte-count for each. To view' the
rest of them, just hit any key and the
second page will display. Hitting any
key a second time will return you to the
100's menu. Even though there are 24
files on the main menu, five of them are
taken up by the ROM programs of
BASIC, TEXT, TELCOM , ADDRSS ,
and SCHEDL. These are not listed on
the file size readout, since they reside in
that ingenious 32K of Read Only Mem-
ory. But all of your RAM files will show'
up . . . even ones that clever program-
mers have hidden from view (for exam-
ple, the COR TNS. CO machine language
program that goes with the WriteF text-
formatting software). Notice that all of
your own text files and programs show
up capitalized, and that there are four
other file names in lowercase you never

14 PCM April 1984

see on the 100’s menu. At least two of them can take up huge
amounts of RAM: “Paste. BF” refers to the TEXT pro-
gram’s Cut and Paste functions. Whenever you select text
and either cut it or copy it, the memory still hangs onto a
copy in the paste buffer ... a nice touch if you change your
mind about “cutting” something. So this listing of the Paste
buffer’s size can be important if you’ve forgotten about that
big paragraph of text you’d cut the day before, which the 100
is still faithfully storing in that hidden “Paste. BF”
(Remember that paste can be cleared by going to any text
file, hit F7 and directly hit F6 — selecting nothing then
cutting it) The second hidden RAM user can be “No-
name. BA” which refers to the last program entered in BASIC
but not saved to a specific filename. 1 do this a lot with games
programs, CLOADing a favorite and playing it for a while,
then forgetting about it till the next day when I hear a beep
and seethe 100 flashing “out of memory.” It’s easily cured by
typing the NEW command, but I like this feature of the file
size program. The other two non-menu files are “File” and
“Reserved” — “File” referring to the number of bytes it
takes to display all the filename characters on the main
menu, and “Reserv.ed” standing for the amount of memory
set aside by the second parameter of BASIC’s CLEAR com-
mand. If your 100 has recently been cold-started, the pro-
gram won’t run until the operating systems are “initialized,”
which means you’ll need to edit a BASIC program line and/ or
do the same with a text file. All in all, a nifty little program
for a mere 614 bytes.

Now, when the boss says “how many pages is 6K?,” use
the benchmark of dividing by 1000 to figure it out in double-
spaced pages, or divide by 2000 for single-space estimates.

To figure out the number of words in any given creation,
the average length of a word is five characters, so simply
divide your total by five.

The listing:

1 DEFINT A-Zs DEFSTR D-F! DIM F (23) , A(2
3): FOR X= -1408 TO -163? STEP -11: IF PE
EK (X) THEN FOR Z=0 TO 7: F(Y) = F(Y) +CH
R* (PEEK (X+3+Z ) ) : NEXTsGOSUB 8

2 NEXT: F (Y-l ) ="NonameBA" : F (Y-2) “"Paste
BF" : X = -1103: G0SUB 8:Y=Y-1: X = Y/2

3 FOR Z=0 TO Y-X: W=Z

4 IF A ( W) > A ( W+X ) THEN B=A(W): A(W)=A(W+
X): A (W+X ) =B: E=F(W): F(W)=F(W+X): F ( W+X
)=E: W=W-X: IF W> -1 THEN 4

5 NEXT: X=X/2: IF X THEN 3 ELSE F(Y)="Re
served": F(Y+l)="File BF": A(Y+1)=A(Y)
+MAXRAM-HIMEM: Y=Y+2: A ( Y ) =A ( Y- 1 ) +MAXFI
LES *267: Z=0

6 CLS: FOR W=Z TO 15+Z: PRINTS (W-Z) *20
, LEFT* <F (W) ,6) ". "RIGHT* (F (W) ,2);: PRINT

USING " #####" ; A < W + l ) -A (W) ; : IF W+1“Y T
HEN W=9S

7 NEXT: E=INPUT$(1): Z=W: IF W=99 THEN M
ENU ELSE 6

8 A ( Y) “PEEK (X+2) *256 +PEEK (X+l) -6553
6: Y=Y+1 : RETURN

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April 1984 PCM 15

Now you can read selected BASIC listings from PCM directly into your

. .

Vlodel 100 with the magic of bar code technology!

By Danny Humphress
PCM Technical Editor

In these few pages, Danny Humphress
gives us the conversion program to turn
your bar code reader into a software
generator, a tutorial to help you get the
job done and a bar code listing of a
BASIC program ready to scan into
memory.

B ar code comes to the masses! No
longer do you have to watch in
awe as the checker at your neigh-
borhood grocery store slides your pur-
chases across a mystic window that
magically “reads” those funny looking
fat and skinny bars. “Personal bar code
reading” has come home, and it’s as
close as your familiar Model 100 and
your subscription to PCM.

With the stroke of your “magic wand,”
you can now rapidly enter printed pro-
grams into your computer without mak-
ing a single mistake! Remember all
those times you slaved over your Model
1 00 keyboard entering what seems like a
thousand DATA statements, and then
searching for hours to find those few
typing mistakes that keep the program
from running. Bar code puts an end to
all that work.

To get started, you will of course need
to pick up a bar code wand from your
local Radio Shack, or one of the other
companies selling BCRs, if you haven’t
already done so. The TRS-80 wand with
which we tested our program, comes
with a cassette tape with the necessary
machine language bar code reader rou-

Danny Humphress, PCM y s Technical
Editor, is the owner of a computer soft -
ware and consulting firm in Louisville,
Ky. Danny brings to PCM his extensive
experience with small business compu-
ters and applications software.

tines and a sample program. The B30F9
program on the cassette tape will be
needed to use the PCM Bar Code Pro-
gram Decoder.

First, load the B30F9 program into
your Model 100 following the instruc-
tions in the manual that came with your
wand. Now enter the accompanying
program into your Model 100 and save
it as BAREAD.BA (I’m afraid you’ll
have to use the keyboard here). Finally,
type RUN to get everything going.

BA READ will ask you for a file-
name. This is the name that will be given
to the program that you read with the
bar code wand. For the test bar code
that follows, you may want to enter
something like “BCTEST,” for exam-
ple. Use the same rules as you would use
when naming any BASIC program. What
BA READ is doing here is creating a
text (. DO) file which may be edited with
TEXT or loaded into BASIC.

The rest of your input comes from the
bar code wand. Please notice that the
bar code lines are numbered. It is very
important that you scan these lines in
order. If you get out of order or you skip
a line or two, just scan the last line (line
50 in thiscase)and run BAREAD again
starting with bar code line Fit will take
a little practice to master scanning bar
code. You must use a swift and even
stroke across the line holding the wand
at a slight angle to the paper. Press the
button on the wand before you begin
your scan and release it after completing
the scan. The Model 100 will beep if you
have successfully scanned the line. If it
does not beep, scan the line again until it
does. Y ou may scan from left to right or
from right to left — whichever is more
comfortable for you.

When you successfully scan the final
line, the Model 100 will return to the
menu display. Never exit this program

FUN!

2 games packages for your
relaxation and enjoyment:

MODEL 100 Games #1
Blockade - Your ‘snake' grows longer
as you hit the randomly appearing
targets on the screen! A one or two
player real-time game.

ReversJ - Outflankyour opponent! Play
against the computer oranother human.

Frankenstein Adventure Find all
of the necessary equipment to awaken
the monster.

Alexis Adventure - Sail the seas and
traverse the islands to recapture your
kingdom.

MODEL 100 Games #2
Maximum - Outscore your opponent
or the computer by taking the higher
point squares and leaving a low point
choice for them.

Checkers - The classic game! Play
against the computer or against a
human or have the computer play it self!

Amazing Chase - Outrun two pur-
suers in a maze in this real-time game
with optional sound.

Williamsburg Adventure - Steal,
eat, shoot, and laugh to find the golden
horseshoel

Choose either of the games packages for
only $24,951

- a lot of software for a little silver
See your dealer or;

Write or call us direct at RO. Box 21 101,
Santa Barbara CA 93121 (805J 966-1449

April 1984 PCM 17

by pressing BREAK, but always scan
the final line of code. The final line tells
BA READ to close files and return to
the menu display. If you should acci-
dentally press BREAK, type GOTO
2100 before you do anything else. This
will close the files and reset the machine
language software.

When you’re finished, go to BASIC
and LOAD the program you just scan-
ned. If you used the above example
name, “BCTEST,” type LOAD“BC

TEST .DO”. You may now run your
new program (error free) or save it as a
“normal” BASIC program by typing
SAVE“BC TEST”. If you save it as a
BASIC program, the original BCTEST
.DO text file may be deleted.

1 refrain from going into details of
how this bar code reading program
works, but let you see that it does work.
We’ll dive into the bar code reader pro-
gram and the program that produced

the bar codes in a future article. Just for
your own curiosity, these bar codes
were produced on an Epson RX-80
printer. To make the codes fit neatly on
the page, we reduced the original codes
to 53 percent.

The encoded program which follows
BA READ is Vincent Lord’s menu gen-
erator. Before you attempt to run the
program, you will need to read “Quick
Menu” on Page 27.

The listing (BAREAD):

NOTE: If your system incorporates the Disk/ Video Inter-
face* remove Line 20 from the BAREAD listing to avoid a
function call error in the program.

10 MAXFILES=2
20 CLEAR 300,61788
30 RUNM "B30F9"

100 CLS

110 PRINT STRING* (40, ) ;

120 PRINT " PCM Bar Code Program De

coder"

130 PRINT STRING! (40 , )

140 PRINTS171 , "File Name: "5
150 LINE ( 1 32,40)— (167 , 40) , 1
160 LINE INPUT FSf
170 PRINT@160,STRINGf(B0,32);

175 0PEN"WAND: 11 FOR INPUT AS 1
180 OPEN FSf FOR OUTPUT AS 2
190 PRINTS176, "Proceed"

200 GOTO 2000

1000 ' *** DECODE STRING ***

1010 D f = " "

1020 FOR 1=1 TO LEN (SI)

1030 SSf =MI Df ( Sf , I , 1 )

1040 IF SSf < >" f " THEN 1100

1050 SSf =MI Df ( Sf , I +1 ,1 )

1060 SSf=CHRf (ASC (SSf ) +32)

1070 1=1+1

1080 GOTO 1200

1100 IF SSf <>"*/." THEN 1200

1110 SSf =M I Df ( Sf ,1+1,2)

1120 SSf=CHRf ( VAL (SSf ) )

1130 1=1+2

1200 Df =Df +SSf

1220 NEXT I
1230 RETURN

2000 '##* READ BAR CODE ***

2010 PLf =" "

2020 INPUT41 , Sf
2030 GOSUB 1000
2040 FOR 1=1 TO LEN (Df )

2050 Cf =M I Df ( Df , 1 , 1 )

2055 IF Cf =CHRf (13) AND RIGHTt (PLf ,5) = "D
ONE" THEN 2100

2060 IF Cf=CHRf(13) THEN F'RINT#2 , PLf: PLf

="" : GOTO 2080

2070 PLf =PLf +Cf

2080 NEXT I

2090 GOTO 2020

2100 CLOSEtCALL 61807:MENU

18 PCM April 1984

BCTEST ( Quick Menu Listing I, Sec Page 27):

Radio Shack’s TRS-8C
Now Offers Disk S

The Revolution
Continues

Our Model 100 Portable Computer’s
built-in software and easy portability
started a revolution in the way
America computes. Professionals of
all kinds — managers, reporters,
ambulance drivers— have found the
Model 100 a valuable tool they can
use anytime, anywhere. Now, with
the new TRS-80 Model 100 Disk/
Video Interface, you can turn your
Model 100 into a versatile disk-
based home or office system, too!

Greater Storage
Capacity and Faster
Access to Data

The new Model 100 Disk/Video In-
terface features a built-in single-
sided, double-density 184K disk
drive to let you create, store and re-
trieve files quickly and easily. You’ll
find it much faster and more reliable
than cassette storage. When you’re
ready to hit the road again, just load
the files you need into your
Model 100 and take off.

* Model 100 Computer
forage and Video !

Attaches Easily to Any
Television

The Disk/Video Interface also lets
you enjoy a big 40-character by 25-
line screen display on any TV. The
larger screen is perfect for writing
notes and reports or developing
your own programs in BASIC.
When accessing data by phone,
you can read a full 25 lines of infor-
mation without scrolling. And you
can utilize all of Model 100’s graph-
ics characters.

No Computer Wizardry
Required

It couldn’t be easier to use. Just
plug the Disk/Video Interface into
an AC outlet, connect your TV and
a Model 100 with a minimum of
16K— all cables are included. One
simple command switches all the
output to the video screen. There’s
no new operating system to learn,
either— the command structure is
exactly the same.

Easily Expandable

You can add a second 184K disk
drive (#26-3807, $239.95*) to the
Disk/Video Interface for even more
versatility. Best of all, the Disk/
Video Interface doesn’t use any of
Model 100's standard connectors,
so you can add a printer, bar code
reader, RS-232C communications
device or cassette recorder. You
can make your Model 100 a high-
performance desktop system.

Get Down to Business With an 80-Column Display

A Compact Office
System

The Disk/Video Interface can turn
your Model 100 into a professional
desktop system for the office, too.
With any standard video monitor, you
get a large 80-character by 25-line
display that’s equal to other desktop
computers. You’ll also get the rapid
access to files and storage reliability
that are so necessary in today’s busi-
ness world.

Come In Today

The TRS-80 Disk/Video Interface,
along with our complete line of
Model 100 accessories, is available
coast to coast.

Available at over 1100
Radio Shack Computer Centers and at
participating Radio Shack stores and dealers

Radio /hack

COMPUTER CENTERS

Perfect “Second System”

A disk-based Model 100 system is an
economical alternative to a second
office computer. And you’ll still have
the advantage of portability when you
need it.

A DIVISION OF TANDY CORPORATION

Send me the all-new TRS-80 Catalog RSC-11. j

Mail To: Radio Shack, Dept. 84-A-732
300 One Tandy Center, Fort Worth, TX 76102

I

ADDRESS _
CITY

STATE _

-ZIP_

I

TELEPHONE _

# W 26-3806
ptional second drive

'Installation not included. Prices apply at participating Radio Shack
stores and dealers. TRS-80 Model 100, Disk/Video Interface and TV
sold separately. CitiLine is a service mark of Citicorp.

$ .t ■

vi$s!V' . -

V-v Jdil© ■' Wn-WA- ‘

An update of the Radio Technical Commission for
Aeronautics investigation into the safety of
inflight portable use

PoCo Passes
Preliminary Tests
With Flying
Colors

By Jim Hawk

PCM Contributing Editor

C onfusion still reigns in the airline
industry over allowing the use of
portable computers during flight
[see accompanying article by Cheryl
Peterson]. We’ve reported in two past
articles about the on-going investiga-
tion of portable computers possibly
creating interference in a variety of air-
craft and other radios. PCM was the
first magazine to report on the creation
of a special commission by the Radio
Technical Commission for Aeronautics
to investigate. But there’s now hope of a
unified agreement — that same gov-
ernment/industry group has agreed on
some preliminary technical standards
that will allow most current portable
computers to be operated onboard air-
liners. The Radio Technical Commis-
sion for Aeronautics agreed to the radio
emissions limits at a meeting held in
Washington Feb. 28 and 29.

To say that the issue of portable com-
puters on airlines has stirred a lot of
interest can be illustrated by a glance at
those present at this latest meeting:
Eastern, Delta, United, Air Canada,
British Air and Western as well as an

(Jim Hawk has been working in radio
news for the past 12 years and has a
science and electronics background. He
also does free-lance writing in Washing-
ton, D.C.)

equal number of manufacturer reps,
including Tandy. And they had plenty
of ground to cover.

The major document submitted was a
study just completed by the Federal
Aviation Administration. Basically, it

“All in all, the case of the
flying portable computer
seems to be strengthen-
ing . .

concluded that there’s a major “path
loss” between the passenger compart-
ment inside and the vulnerable aircraft
antennas mounted on a plane’s under-
belly outside. Quoting from the FAA
report, “the prospect is that interference
exterior to the aircraft will be a more
likely source of a communication fre-
quency signal than a high level interior
signal.” What that means is that operat-
ing a portable computer inside a plane
generates almost negligible interference
by the time it finds a path outside the
metal-skinned plane . . . especially when
compared to outside sources like pow-
erful FM stations close to 108 MHz.
(Frequency bands between 108 and 137
MHz support aviation communications

Whose Skies
Are User Friendly?

By Cheryl Peterson

An informal survey of the airlines
highlights agents' confusion.

I n a reversal of a previous decision to
ban their use, Eastern Airlines
announced that it will allow the use
of portable lap-sized computers aboard
its planes. A recent press release stated
that use would only be limited during
takeoffs and landings, when the units
would have to be stored away just like
any other carry-on baggage.

Felix Forestieri, head of Corporate
Communications for Latin America,
said he was very glad that the airlines
were able to reach the conclusion that
the computers did not interfere with the
navigation of their planes. As a personal
computer user, he could well under-
stand a passenger’s desire to use a por-
table while flying.

“But we couldn’t allow their use until
we had assured ourselves that they
would, in no way, interfere with the safe
operation of the aircraft. Our tests have
proven to us that they are safe,” he
added.

1 conducted an informal survey of
Some of the major airlines to uncover
their policies in this area. What I found
was a general lack of knowledge about
their policies.

Trans World, United, and American
Airlines reservation clerks had an im-
mediate answer available. American said
“No.” The clerk was under the impres-
sion that a study had been done and the
results were unfavorable for computer
users.

T he other two approved. The TWA
clerk referred me to my dealer, claiming
that the dealer would know' whether or
not my particular computer would inter-
fere with the airplanes’ navigation
equipment.

Ticketing agents at the other airlines 1
called had to get an answer from some-
one else. At Piedmont, Patty Wallace
apologized for keeping me waiting and

(Cheryl Peterson is a free* la nee writer
and homemaker in Miami Beach. Shy
started computing on an early edition
Osborne I, the first "portable. " She is a
tegular contributor to numerous* com-
puter publications,)

22 PCM April 1984

and the airlines are concerned about
European proposals to allow megawatt-
sized FM stations.) The aircraft tested
by the FA A was a Boeing 727, and some
of the test equipment included a Collins
signal generator, Hewlett-Packard spec-
trum analyzer and even an Apple com-
puter. Results were about a 70db elec-
tromagnetic loss from the transmitter
inside the 727 to the antenna outside.
And any radio engineer will tell you
that’s a huge amount of signal loss.
Separate testing is being done by Boeing
and McDonnell Douglas, although
those results aren’t in yet. But even the
FAA’s own representative at the meet-
ing said this one test w'as not enough to
conclude portable computers were safe.
Karl Bierach noted the initial test didn’t
even employ sample portables, and that
there should be a "proof of the pudding
test” with portable computers running a
variety of software and as close to the
avionics of a plane as possible belore
any new regulations arc finalized.

Let it be noted here that airlines are
unanimous about wanting to settle this
matter — passengers who carry porta-
ble computers are often frequent busi-
ness fliers who hold a lot of dollar sway.
The airlines, anxious to attract these
first-class passengers, have also been
doing their own testing of portable
computers for interference. United’s
Dennis Tangney was representative,
saying there were no observable effects
when a portable was operated inside the
aircraft. The only detrimental effects in
this hanger-based test were noticed when
the portables were held in close proxim-
ity to the aircraft antenna outside (with-
in inches) — an impossible location for
passengers in-flight. Eastern Airlines
also did some testing, concluding the
portables should be shut off during
takeoff and landing but otherwise are
okay . . . curious since the couple of
suspected incidents have both occurred
in-flight.

A nother report given to the special
committee was from Hewlett-Pack-
ard tested against the Class A limits for
radiation. Right now, all computers must
meet the easier Class B standards.

Besides testing four of their own cal-
culator/computer products, the HP en-
gineers also tested the Model 100, the
NEC 8201, the Epson HX-20 and the
Sharp PC-5000. The results were very
interesting, showing the Model 100
within the stringent Class A standard
but measuring the NEC slightly over the
maximum limits in the range below 2
M Hz. The Epson model was well below

the Class B limits, but went beyond the
Class A limits just below 1 MHz and
just above 100 MHz. And what one air-
line representative called the "dirtiest”
machine by far was the Sharp PC-5000
— it was over the Class A limits in at
least ten different frequencies, and even
pushed slightly over the B limits in the
100 MHz range.

A second report investigating the
Model 100 came from Underwrit-
er’s Laboratories, commissioned by
Radio Shack. It measured the 100’s per-
formance in the ultra-low frequency
range from 10 KHz to 150 KHz. And
the results were just as excellent in the
higher ranges, showing the 100 would
fall within the government’s Class A
standards if they were extended down-
ward the current low frequency test-
ing limit is 150 KHz. There’s concern,
since a plane’s computerized data buses
operate in the ultra-low range. Both the
Underwriters and Hewlett-Packard re-
ports tested the portable computers in a
standard "looping” program, and did
not seek out "worst case” software that
might have produced different results.
What this boiled down to in the two-day
meeting was sharp disagreement over
calling for a maximum level of radiated
interference, and just where those tech-
nical limits should be. In the end, it was
a compromise between two existing
standards that Special Committee 156
favored. Specifically, the committee
agreed to "use DO- 160 A Category A
limits above 30 MHz and Category B
limits from 190 KHz to 30 MHz as the
baseline standards for further test.” Al-
though the committee action does not
come close to the force of law, and
wouldn’t become official until the full
RTCA gives the okay, at least manufac-
turers have some sort of guideline on
how much shielding to use when design-
ing new portable equipment.

The committee adjourned until the
middle of June, and among the goals of
that next meeting will be a special
worst-case test. Technicians at Delta
Airlines came up with a black box test
computer that was specially designed to
be a "dirty” source of radio interference.
It was that black box test that convinced
Eastern to lighten up on its outright ban
of portables. United and Delta repre-
sentatives said they also had lifted bans
since the last meeting in November.

All in all, the case of the flying porta-
ble computer seems to be strengthening,
and unless some convincing data comes
in to the contrary, it appears that mod-
els like the 100 will soon be as common
as calculators onboard U.S. airlines.

told me they needed to call the main
office to find out for sure. She took my
number and got back to me about 15
minutes later. For the moment. Pied-
mont is not allowing computer use in
flight. H owever, a safety study is being
conducted. When the results are avail-
able, she imagined that some announce-
ment would be made.

Northwest Orient said that it would
be up to the Right crew to decide. In
general though, they usually allow them
to be used in flight, but not during
takeoffs and landings. If problems were
detected, they would probably ask you
to stop.

Republic had much the same re-
sponse. Only if interference were de-
tected would you be asked to put the
computer away. All carry-on baggage
must be stowed during takeoffs and
landings.

1 got two unqualified "No’s” Air
Florida and Continental. Neither agent
could tell me if plans had been made to
investigate further.

A t Pan Am, Mike Clark, the director
of public relations for the southern
U.S., said that computer use was per-
mitted in-flight. "We never did ban
them. We did a study early on. As soon
as something like this develops, we get
right on it.” He also. said that their inde-
pendent study showed that computers
were safe.

Marilyn Kucher, a spokesperson for
Delta, said they were allowing them on
their flights. "We have concluded that
battery-powered portable computers can
be used on Delta flights. We have con-
ducted tests and our tests have not
found any indication that a battery-
powered portable computer w ould cause
interference to aircraft systems, includ-
ing navigation and communications.”
Bob Sherman, a professional photo-
grapher from Miami, has flown several
times with his Model 100. Before using
his computer on board, he has always
spoken w ith the pilot first. A recent bus-
iness trip included flights on four differ-
ent airlines. He was allowed to use his
computer on all four. Two pilots spoke
with him afterward. One said he could
see no difference, the other wondered
why Sherman hadn’t used his computer
after all. Sherman was using the compu-
ter almost the whole trip.

Until an industry-wide regulation or
directive is released, though, it would be
a good idea to call the airline you plan to
fly before you make your reservation. If
it is really important to you to use your
computer while flying, reassure yourself
before boarding. 02333

April 1984 PCM 23

FULL-FEATURE SPREADSHEET

For Your Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100/NEC PC-8201A Portable Computers

AM Pi’s AmericanCalc Spreadsheet — desig

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Business Management

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100, and NPlan for the NEC PC-8201A-— is a full-
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features: handles up to a maximum of 90 rows or 26
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and go to any location; accepts data entries for

_ Includes T Plan and

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Statements, Balance Sheets, Business Start-
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Analysis.

Sales and Marketing Management

numbers, labels, and formulas; formulas include
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,
power, trigonometric, integer, absolute, natural
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or formulas; insert or delete rows or columns;
copy, save, load, and screen dump; and built-in
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instruction manual, pre-recorded audio tape, and
— i case.

Sales and Marketing Management — Includes
T Plan and N Plan application templates for:
Sales Forecast, Profit Mark Up, Sales Analy-
sis, Project Cost Estimate, and Advertise-
ment Efficiency Measurement.

AMPI also has available several additional
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This popular spreadsheet now has three new
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INSTRUCTION MANUAL

T PLAN/.N PLAN

SPREAD SHEET

RADIO SHACK i RS-S0 NEC FC.-820JA'

© 1984 American Micro Products, Inc.

With its built-in modem and battery-powered memory, the
Ml 00 is fast becoming known to those responsible for gatl
ering and writing the news as . . .

By David W. Creed

(Dave Creed is an assistant managing
editor of The Courier-Journal, with
special computer-related responsibili-
ties for that newspaper and The Louis-
ville Times. Aside from the Model 100
he uses at work , he owns an Osborne l
computer, which he bought in 1981
when it was ‘ the * portable computer.)

if t T ; til fit f ff ?

April 1984 PCM

the manufacturer of many of the term-
inals used by newspapers upgraded the
amount of RAM from 2K to 8K.

Things improved in the late 70s and
early '80s: The machines became more
reliable, somewhat lighter and some-
what more flexible. But reporters were
still shackled by the AC power cord and
restricted by the si/e of the machines.

And the equipment was still expen-
sive the most useful of the models
available w^as introduced at nearly
$5,000 and still costs about $3,000 -
which was a major consideration even
for medium-sized newspapers like those
in Louisville: We needed to equip 18
people at 1 2 bureaus, plus a dozen or so
sports writers and other writers who
traveled on occasion. Although we
maintained an inventory of about 35
portable terminals for The Courier-
Journal and its sister newspaper. The
Louisville Times , there weren't enough
terminals to meet all our needs.

Nor w ould the existing equipment, all
of w'hich required either AC power or a
heavy battery pack, have been useful in
situations such as covering a fire or a
meeting.

Then came the spring of '83.

As 1 walked into the office one after-
noon, an assistant city editor and fellow
home-computer owner told me there’d
been a phone call earlier: "A guy from
Radio Shack says he has something he
thinks you’d be interested in.” His voice
conveyed his amusement at the idea that
Tandy would have something we’d care
about after all, didn’t we both refer to
Radio Shack machines as the “Trash
80”?

That was before we saw the product
reviews and called the Radio Shack
representative for a demonstration: We
wrote stories, we edited them, we sent
them to our Atex system, w^e got them
back from Atex. Our computer techni-
cians opened one and w'ere impressed.

Best of all were the price and — look,
Ma: No wires!

We bought two for evaluation. They
passed the critical appraisal of report-
ers, editors and technicians alike. We
rented one to help cover a visit by Presi-
dent Reagan. Then we ordered six more,
and now have 2 1 . Our sportswriters use
eight of those machines; three more are
in our bureau in Frankfort, the state
capital, for use during the current ses-
sion of the state legislature. The repor-
ters plan to take them into the House
and Senate chambers to write during
sessions. Another is in our Washington
bureau, and our correspondent there
used it to write the Kentucky congres-

sional delegation’s response to Presi-
dent Reagan’s State of the Union mes-
sage. He transmitted to us from the
House press gallery saving perhaps 30
minutes of time on deadline. We plan to
put one in our Eastern Kentucky bureau,
where the Model 100 would be ideal for
covering the all-too-frequent mine ac-
cidents.

The cost has been a major factor in
allow ing us to do this: Even with all the
accessories, we can buy four.32K ma-
chines for the price of one of the dumb
terminals that had been our standard
equipment a year earlier. That means

CJ&T photo by Bill Luster

Reporter A l Cross, Bardstown bureau
chief for The Courier-JournaL writes
his story from the floor of the Ken-
tucky Legislature.

we can afford to buy machines for film
critics, city reporters and business writ-
ers, that we can put computer power in
the hands of people who alw'ays needed
it.

Our experience isn’t unique; the
Model 100 has, in fact, taken the news-
paper industry by storm:

Newsdaw a highly regarded daily
newspaper published in Long Island,
covered the Winter Olympics in Sara-
jevo with Model 100s. Newsday has also
equipped its bureaus in London, Mex-
ico City and Peking with Model 100s.

The Associated Press, which has
about 60 Model 1 00s, also used them in
Sarajevo. So did the Detroit Free Press ,
which has more than 30 Model 1 00s.

Other major users of the machine
include The Washington Post , which
has about 60: the Los Angeles Times ,
which has 32, United Press Interna-
tional, the Chicago Sun-Times and the
Boston Globe.

The Minneapolis Star and Tribune
encourages its news employees to buy
their own Model 1 00s and helps out by
providing free RAM chips to staff

members who buy the 8K version.

One major newspaper that hasn’t
jumped on the bandwagon is The New
York Times , which owns just 16. Tech-
nology editor Howard Angione says the
Model 100 is a godsend for reporters
following the presidential candidates,
but he’s waiting for more memory and a
display that has more than eight lines by
40 characters.

A measure of the Model 100’s popu-
larity with newspapers involves a spe-
cial report on the Associated Press and
United Press International wire services
that goes to the 100 or so newspapers
that have Atex publishing systems. Al-
most every week, the transmissions in-
clude BASIC programs for, or tips on,
using the growing number of Model
100s probably near 1.000 — owned
by those newspapers.

In fact, programmability is one major
advantage the Model 100 has over the
more expensive terminals. Louisville
reporters who are on the road now have
tools they didn’t have before: a reason-
ably accurate way to measure story
length, a built-in calculator, and a way
to make global changes in a file. That
alone saves a reporter’s time by allowing
use of “shorthand” text entry. And
we’ve loaded each machine with a BASIC
program for file transmission that’s
friendlier than TELCOM , plus one that
cases killing of .DO files. (Reporters
tend to be“computerphobes”more often
than not, so anything that eases use of
the machine is welcome.)

The Model 100 isn’t perfect by any
means: We’d like the 64 K RAM capa-
bility and the cursor key arrangement of
the NEC. (In fact, we think Tandy
should have made more RAM available
as its latest announced enhancement,
rather than the disk drive external
monitor adapter — and we’re waiting
for information from PG Design Elec-
tronics on its bank-switchable 32K
RAM chip.) We’d like smaller charac-
ters displayed and more of them - we’re
waiting to see if there is truth to the
rumor that there will be a Model 200
announced this summer with an 8-line-
by-80-character display. We’d like it to
have a built-in light so that a darkened
press box wouldn’t faze a sports writer.
And we’re glad other vendors are offer-
ing cases more useful than the soft case
that comes w ith the machine or the plas-
tic briefcase Tandy sells.

But with the built-in modem, the
Model 100 is the best thing in its price
range and, for many uses, is the best at
any price. For many reporters, the
Model 100 is a freedom machine. GCES

26 PCM April 1984

How often have you bought software and just been amazed at how
quickly and nicely all the menus appear? Now you can add those
same finishing touches to your own programs.

I he Quick Menu program
(Listing I) is in barcode
form on Page 19.

Quick Menu —

A Programming Utility

By Vincent Lord

W ant to make life a bit easier for
yourself when it’s time to
add menus to the program
you’re working on? And at the same
time have them appear promptly and
neatly centered?

With this program used as a subrou-
tine you can have up to five items on
each menu. If you are fortunate enough
to have a disk-monitor available, the

(Vincent Lord has a degree in chemistry
from the University of Tennessee and
has done extensive work with using
computers to operate gas and liquid
chromatographs.)

selection can be expanded.

The hard part of any menu design is
figuring where to locate everything on
the screen, usually using the PRINT @
worksheet on Page 210 of the manual.
As you are probably aware using the
worksheet is very time consuming and
each menu must be individualized.

I o prepare a professional looking
menu, add the program in Listing I to
the end of your program as a subrou-
tine. To prepare, for example, a main
menu which would allow you to create a
new file, edit file, add or delete to a file,
print, or exit the menu, you would enter
the necessary menu items as a string
separated by a slash “/ ”. For Example:

100 D$=“MA1N MENU/CREATE
NEW FILE/EDITOLD FILE/ ADD
OR DELETE TO FILE/PRINT/
END”:GOSUB 30000:ON I GOTO
200,300,400,500,600

Then, you can enter subroutines with
their respective menus and again use
GOS U B 30000 to correctly print out the
menu. The program will center the
headings and the menu selection items.
The program as listed (LISTING 1 ) will
allow up to five selections plus the head-
ing or title. Listing 2 can be added to
Listing I to serve as an example of how
the Quick Menu can be used in your
program.

NOTE: Listing 1 will not run as a stand-alone. It is a subrou-
tine which must be appended to a host program in order to
run properly. The example listing below (Listing 2) will
serve as such a program in order to see the Quick Menu
program operate.

30210 IF 13=0 THEN T$=MID$(D$,N) : GOTO 302
30

30220 T$=MID$(D$,N,Q-1) s N=N+Q
30230 RETURN

Listing 1:

30000 REM CREATE MENU THAT'S CENTERED
30010 J=0 : K=0: L=0: N= 1

30020 GQSUB 30200: CLS: P=INT < (40-LEN(T$) )

12 )

30030 PRINT TAB (P) T$: PRINT TAB ( P ) STR ING$
(LEN <T$) ,CHR$ (231 ) )

30040 IF I NSTR ( D$ , “ / " ) =0 THEN RETURN

30050 G0SUB 30200: K=K+1

30060 IF LEN(T*)>L THEN L=LEN(T*)

30070 Tf(K)=T*:IF Q<>0 THEN 30050
30080 M=INT((32-L)/2):G$=STRING$(M," ")
30085 IF K=5 THEN 30100
30090 FOR X=1 TO (6-K)/2:PRINT:NEXTX
30100 FOR X= 1 TO K:PRINTG$; X"- ";T$(X):N
EXT X

30110 PRINTS287,"";: INPUT "CHOOSE SELECTI
ON NUMBER" ; I

30120 IF I< 1 OR I >K THEN BEEP: GOTO 30110
30130 PRINT«287,STRINB*(15," " ) ; : RETURN
30200 Q=INSTR (MIDI (D$ , N) , " / " )

Listing 2:

100 D*="MAIN MENU/CREATE NEW FILE/EDIT 0
LD FILE/ADD OR DELETE TO FILE/PRINT/END
AND RETURN TO MENU"

110 G0SUB 30000: ON I GOTO 200,300,400,50
0,600

200 D$="MENU/CREATE NEW MENU/EDIT OLD FI
LE/ADD OR DELETE TO FILE/PRINT"

210 G0SUB 30000: ON I GOTO 300,400,500,60
0

230 GOTO 600

300 D$=" MENU/CREATE/ED IT/ ADD"

310 GOSUB30000 : ON I GOTO 400,500,600
400 D*="MENU/CREATE FILE/EDIT FILE"

410 G0SUB 30000 : ON I GOTO 500,600
500 D$="MENU/CREATE"

510 G0SUB 30000: ON I GOTO 600
600 D$="MENU MASTER"

610 G0SUB 30000: PRI NT" THI S ENDS IT":ST0P

April 1984 PCM 27

By Randy Graham

W ith this article I would like to
go back and pick up some
loose ends from last month’s
“Reaching Out With TELCOM .”

One of the applications not discussed
in that article was telecommunicating
with another small computer. Perhaps
you and a friend want to exchange soft-
ware, or you want to upload and down-
load data to the office computer. A few
special rules apply.

If you are communicating over tele-
phone lines, you will probably use your
built-in modem, which means you will
be working at 300 Baud. PoCo must be
in terminal mode and so must the other
computer. Probably both terminal pack-
ages default to standard parameters.
(Quick review for newcomers who are
shy about raising their hands: “Parame-
ters” here means the values used by the

(Randy Graham is a rehabilitation
counselor working with the handi-
capped. Personal computing is his
hobby; telecommunications one of his
favorite activities . He has done free-
lance information retrieval and is an
inveterate user of the major online
systems.)

computer like Baud rate, number of bits
per word, number of stop bits, and par-
ity. “Default” means the values set by
the program when you load and run it.
The default parameters in TELCOM
can be read by pressing F3 - STAT and
then ENTER.) But before getting in too
deep, you better check both manuals to
make sure your parameters match.
Otherwise, you will be sending garbage
to each other.

As you try out this application, I sug-
gest that you talk to the other person by
voice and have an agreement that if
communication does not work in say,
10 seconds, you will turn off your
modems and pick up the phones and
talk.

Once you have these parameters set,
you will run into a couple of new r prob-
lems. Remember, we said that informa-
tion service computers had a host pro-
gram with “full duplex.” That means
that w'hen you type a character, the host
sends it back to your screen for visual
verification. Well, between two small
computers, this echoing of characters is
missing. You will therefore have to go to
W/'duplex in your TERM program. F4
toggles between full and half duplex,
showing the current status on the LA-
BEL line. (Remember, “toggle” means
you push it once, it switches to HALF,

push it again, it switches back to FULL.)

When in half duplex, what you type is
written to the screen, just like when you
are word processing. The price is that
you do not know for sure what is going
out over the line. Incidentally, if you
forget to switch out of half duplex when
working a system with full duplex, every-
thing you type will be doubled on the
screen. If you type “HELLO,” your
screen will show “HHEELLLLOO.
This is a signal to punch F4. Only out-
going traffic is affected; incoming data
will print correctly on your screen no
matter which mode you have set.

There is one other adjustment you
will have to make that seems peculiar to
PoCo. When sending or receiving text,
and the words are w'rapping around,
everything is fine. But at the end of the
line, or to do a blank line, hitting
ENTER does not do a linefeed. The
cursor will go back to the beginning of
the line it is on and write over it. Very
frustrating. PoCo will send linefeeds,
but does not recognize them for some
reason. Even having the other terminal
send linefeeds does not seem to work.
Perhaps more expert users out there can
help us out with this problem. The only
solution 1 have found is to type CON-
TROLS (i.e., hold down the control
key w'hile typing ‘J\ That is the ASCII

28 PCM April 1984

o\ U.

Small Computer

Hul | m W » If W W Y jMT T TE TE 1 JkM | | || 1 1 1

code for linefeed and will work. And if
you are there reading the screen it is not
too hard. Anyone know a better way?

For the second case, to communicate
between computers in the same room,
you need a cable. You can buy a cable
and a “null modem” from Radio Shack
for some money. Want to make your
own? Back to school, campers! Y ou will
be working through PoCo’s built-in
RS-232C circuit, which means you are
limited to serial input/ output. Serial
I/O needs only three lines: transmit,
receive and signal ground. If you try to
hook up two computers with a regular
cable, you will have transmit going to
transmit and receive to receive and
nothing will happen. A “null modem” is
just an inline gadget that crisscrosses
these lines. If you make your own cable,
you can do your own crisscrossing. It is
a simple project.

All RS-232C ports seem to use the
DB-25 connector. This is a two-row
plug with 13 pins on the top row and 12
on the bottom so that you cannot put it
in upside down. 1 do not know why
someone selected the DB-25 plug when
only three pins are needed. Whenever 1
ask an electronics expert, he just mum-
bles.

PoCo’s serial port uses eight pins and
you can safely ignore five of them. Get a

DB-25 for your PoCo and another or
whatever is needed for the other compu-
ter along w ith whatever length of three-
conductor wire you may need.

Now, get out both manuals and iden-
tify the pins needed. A hint it took me a
long time to get up nerve enough to ask
about: When you look at the illustration
in the manual, you are looking at the
socket in the back of the computer, not
the plug on the end of the wire. This
means that you arc also looking at the
back end of the plug where you will
attach the wires.

Take your plug and hold it up so you
are looking at the backside with the long
row on top, like in the diagram. Count-
ing from the right, you will attach w ires
to pins 2. 3 and 7. Ignore the rest. Let’s
say you used red, blue and black wire.
At the other end, attach red (transmit)
to the “receive data” pin, blue (receive
data) to “transmit data” and black (sig-
nal ground) to “signal ground.” Solder
neatly, check with an ohmmeter or
other low-voltage continuity checker
and you are ready to go.

Another hint. Tandy did not give us
much clearance for the plug; they ob-
viously want us to use a metal casing.
But nobody makes metal casings now.
Find one in a junk box if you can. I
could not and so 1 took my penknife and

very scientifically whittled down the
plastic cover of the plug until it fit. Y ou
can also open up PoCo’s case and file
the top notch a little deeper. The bottom
of the notch has plenty of room.

Okay, let’s review: three wires, trans-
mit-to-receive, receive-to-transmit and
signal ground-to-signal ground. Hook
them together, load your terminal pro-
gram in the other computer, access
TELCO M in PoCo and it is time to play
the parameter game again.

Since you are not going to use your
built-in modem, you must switch to the
other port. Go to F3 - ST AT and type
371 1 E to replace M71 1 E. But, since you
are not limited to the modem protocols,
there is no reason not to use the highest
possible Baud rates. Set both of them
for 1200 or even 9600. Just make sure
both ends are the same in all parame-
ters. Remember to go to half duplex if
you w ant to see what is going on and do
those CONTROL-Js whenever you need
a linefeed.

Now let’s review this one more time.
T o communicate with another personal
computer by phone, hook up PoCo as
described in the previous article. Check
to make sure the parameters are the
same, go to half duplex and insert line-
feeds as needed. Upload and download
the same way you do when calling a

April 1984 PCM 29

bulletin board or information service.
To communicate with another compu-
ter in the same room, hook them up
with an appropriate cable, switch from
modem to Serial I/O port by changing
the first parameter, and proceed as
instructed: match parameters, use half
duplex and insert linefeeds. If down-
loading to PoCo, make sure your F2 -
DOWN feature is enabled (shows on
your label line in reverse video when
enabled). One more trick to learn in this
lesson.

BASIC interpreters save programs in
“tokenized” form which is only mean-
ingful to themselves. The tokens are
ASCII characters, but not as you and I
recognize them — and not as the com-
puter recognizes them if it thinks it is
reading text instead of tokens.

Many terminal programs can trans-
mit and receive tokenized or binary
program files because a warning signal
is sent along with the title. PoCo docs
not have this capability. It only uploads
and downloads text files which are in
ASCII format. What to do? Pay atten-
tion now; underline as necessary, unless
you are reading this at the bookstore
magazine rack.

Let’s start off with your friend want-
ing to send you his favorite BASIC pro-
gram. When all is ready, press F2 -
DOWN. PoCo will ask “File to down-
load.” Name it FREEBY { we would call
it “Freebie” if PoCo let us use seven-
letter file names). When the program
has been downloaded, close the file,
thank your friend and get offline. Go to
the menu and you will find FREEBY
. DO waiting for you. Open this file and
clean up everything that docs not look
like a BASIC program. Back to menu and
BASIC. Go F2- LOAD and type “FREE-
BY” (no extension). PoCo will flash
“WAIT” and soon say OK. It has read
the text file into BASIC program storage
and it is ready to run. You can run it or
list it. Now go to F3 - SAVE and save
FREEB Y. If you want to check, you can
go to the menu and you will find both
FREEB Y. DO and FREEB Y. BA on file.
Back to BASIC to KILL FREEBY. DO
and to dump the program from the
BASIC area by typing NEW. The move-
ment of the BASIC program from your
friend’s computer to yours is complete.

Now, let’s go the other way. You have
a program in RAM called SUPER. BA
which you want to send to your friend.
Go to BASIC. F2 - LOAD SUPER. BA.
Okay. Now — new trick, F3 - SAVE
SUPER, A. A pause. Okay. Type NEW
to dump the program from BASIC’s area.
Go to menu. Lo, a file called SUPER

.DO\ Call friend. Go to RELCOM. Go
to TERM. Toggle UP. What file?
SUPER — and away it will go to your
friend’s computer. When you get off
line, go to BASIC and type KILL
SUPER. DO and everything is back to
its original form. If either of these
procedures for converting text to BASIC
files is in the PoCo manual, I missed
them.

Why go to all this trouble, you ask?
Well, let’s do a little arithmetic. Say,
FREEBY and SUPER are5K programs.
For “5K” read “5000+ keystrokes.” If
you type 50 words per minute not a
bad speed for a nonprofessional touch
typist — you are typing an average of

“ When you are into
a high-priced
database and are
trying to remember
your sets and search
strategy , it is no
time for ruminating
or redisplaying . .

250 keystrokes per minute. It is, there-
fore, going to take you 20 minutes of
straight typing to transmit that program
from the keyboard, not counting time to
correct errors and to cuss. Now, I do
type at 50-60 wpm, but 1 am not going to
do that kind of typing for my best friend
— at least not very often. Let PoCo do
it; that’s what I hired him for!

Meet “Little Sir Echo”

Time to learn another trick to improve
PoCo's performance. I almost missed
this one in the manual because Tandy
did not surround it with flashing red
lights. I have been using “echo”to name
the process whereby a host computer
sends a received character back for veri-
fication in the full duplex mode. Tandy
is using“ECHO”to mean “turn on print-
er.” Watch carefully, now.

Plug in your printer and turn it on.
Go to TELCO M and to TERM. Press
F5 — the word ECHO appears on your

label line. Now send and receive stuff
online. Lo, it is all being printed out on a
piece of paper! TERM defaults to ECHO
off and we never knew it was there until
we enabled it. F5 toggles ECHO (print
hard copy) on and off. So?

Printing online is the best improve-
ment I have found for the limitation we
noted earlier. You can only review the
last eight lines received with FI - PREV.
The rest is gone . . . gone . . . gone. If
you enabled DOWN, you are saving it,
but to review earlier data, you will have
to exit TELCO M , go to TEXT and read
the file. Time wasteful.

Say, you are on a bulletin board with
a lot of neat programs in the public
access section and you pick out several
on the list you want to download. You
read one into DOWN and are ready for
another. Y ou have to ask that the list be
reprinted for you, while paying longdis-
tance charges. If you arc dumping to
your printer, you can grab the paper
that is spooling off, find the list and
make your next selection. Much neater.
So you waste some paper — how much
does it cost to call New York from
where you live?

Now, those of you who are informa-
tion specialists will immediately recog-
nize the value of this feature. When you
are into a high-priced database and arc
trying to remember your sets and search
strategy, it is no time for ruminating or
redisplaying, right? Remember how
many of us trained on TI printing ter-
minals? PoCo's ECHO feature matches
this capability and wall make you feel
right at home. The rest of you, don’t
worry what this paragraph means; we
will get around to you in due time.

Let’s play math class again about
enabling your printer. If you are using
your modem at 300 Baud, this means
that you are sending and receiving at
about 30 characters per second. Most
dot matrix printers used with personal
computers run at 1 20 cps; the cheapest I
have ever used ran at 60. Daisy w+eel
printers usually are much slower than
that, but most printers should have no
trouble keeping up with your transmis-
sion. But, just in case you are curious,
let’s do a little more exploring and in the
process meet another nice friend.

The printer is the second slowest part
of any computer system. The slowest
part, of course, is the dummy sitting at
the keyboard, trying to find the k X’ key.
Data entry is the big bottleneck of all
electronic information systems and is
the reason that we will do anything con-
ceivable to transfer data electronically
once we have it in memory.

30 PCM April 1984

Back to business. The second slowest
part is the printer. The data industry is
constantly working on ways to speed up
printing, or to bypass the delay by using
buffers and multi-tasking, et cetera.
Meanwhile, all computers sit around
most of the time waiting for the printer
to punch its little dots on the paper. The
“waiting” protocol is called XON/
XOFF.

Imagine that you are dictating a note
or a recipe or something to someone
who is not an expert stenographer. Y ou
say a couple of words, pause, the other
person says “Okay,” and you say a cou-
ple of more words. Drives you crazy,
what? Makes you appreciate the infinite
patience ol a computer. If you are read-
ing what you are dictating, you proba-
bly put your finger on the spot w'here
you stopped. In computers, this is called
a pointer. Hah.

Now, computers are always waiting
for the other person or device to get
ready, to get back to work. When you
are online, working at 300 Baud, the
conversation between the computers
sounds like this: “H”; “Wait a nanose-
cond”; “Did you say ‘H 7”; “Wait a nano-
second”; “Yes, 1 said k H’ ”; “E”; “Wait a
nano, 1 have someone on the line from
San Diego”; “OK, back to you; did you
say 'EY” That’s XON/ XOFF. If you
turn it off, transmission will be much
faster, but you are likely to lose data,
after which Vs back to the old garbage
can.

Printers use this protocol all the time.
Even if it has a buffer, the computer fills
it instantly and then has to wait until
there is more room in the buffer. Now,
PoCo can cascade these protocols to
insure that no data is lost.

To test this, 1 plugged my TRS-80
CGP-l 15 plotter into PoCo. This is the
little fellow that draws text and graphics
on narrow paper with colored ball point
pens. It is a cute little gadget and a lot of
fun to use with my Color Computer.
Flat out, all pens flying, it prints text at
1 2 cps. Would 1 lose much text? No, not
at all. I logged on to CompuServe and
enabled ECHO. CGP jiggled away, writ-
ing it all down at a very slow rate. I hat
little printer, controlling PoCo, was
making CompuServe’s monster main-
frames run at its speed !

Let me put in a little plug for that
plotter. It is a lightweight but versatile
gadget. 1 can carry it around with me to
list, proofread, and do memos to myself.
It has to be plugged in, of course; all
printers do. 1 guess in today’s jargon,
you would say that my PoCo and CGP
are a “transportable” system. I think of

it as an overgrown Pocket Computer. 1
highly recommend some such transport-
able printer as a friend to PoCo. 1
selected the CGP partly because it prints
a 40-column line which makes it easy to
hit the old PRINT key.

A New Day Dawning

Last month, I briefly mentioned MCI
Mail as an example of what new infor-
mation technology is bringing us. Let’s
take a closer look at a service which will
undoubtedly be offered by a number of
vendors. But, let me say right up front
that when 1 mention any commercial
product or service, it is just for purposes
of identification: 1 have used it and it
works as described. I here may be many
other similar offerings on the market
which work better or cheaper or what-
ever.

Now, back to MCI Mail. These are
the long distance people, and they have
apparently teamed up with Purolatorto

invites you to compose your message
offline and upload it, and with PoCo
that will be a piece of cake.

It is when the time comes to specify
delivery that MCI begins to shine. It the
addressee is an MCI subscriber, it is
forwarded electronically to his “mail-
box.” A copy is also filed in your elec-
tronic “in box.” The basic charge for
this is $1 for an “ounce.” This unit is
hard to define, but MCI says to estimate
it at 7,500 characters.

If you want the letter printed out, you
can choose regular mail. The letter will
be routed to the nearest MCI facility
w'here it will be printed out, put in an
envelope and mailed. Basic cost is $2.
For $6, you can choose an “overnight
letter” which will be delivered by courier
before noon of the next business day.
And for S25, they will deliver it w'ithin
four hours by courier! The last two ser-
vices are only offered in selected cities.
The list is sure to grow.

When you are online , working at 300 Baud,
the conversation between the computers
sounds like this: “H”; “ Wait a nanosecond
“ Did you say ‘H’?”; " Wait a nanosecond”;
“Yes, I said ‘H’”

provide the handiest service since the
Western Union boy on his bicycle. As a
Dow-Jones Information Service sub-
scriber. I received an information packet
describing this new offering. I have tried
it out and it works for sure. It will prob-
ably be more useful to business people
than to hobbyists like me, but let’s give
it a run-through.

You call up and logon like any other
online service. Then you start writing a
letter. As soon as you name the addres-
see, the service checks to see it that per-
son is in its files; it so, the address is
supplied. If not, you are asked to add
the address to the file.

You can format your message as a
letter, a memo, a report or whatever.
Y ou can choose to send copies to multi-
ple addressees or you can choose to send
it to multiple addressees as if it was an
original. You can alter the contents to
different addressees. Very versatile.

When it comes to composing the mes-
sage, there is an online editor for your
use. But, of course, you are paying con-
nect time charges while using it. MCI

But, wait — there is more, as they say
in the 1-800 commercials. The letter is
printed on very nice white paper and
inserted in a 9 x 12 window envelope
clearly identified as MCI mail. Not
good enough? For a one-time charge,
you can send them your letterhead and
signature. When specified, your letters
will be laser-printed on a facsimile let-
terhead and close with your facsimile
signature. How about that — and in
four hours to selected cities!

Other little goodies go on and on. As
a subscriber, you receive MCI Mail. Go
to your mailbox. Instruct MCI to lor-
ward it to the following addressees, with
or without your appended note. For
instance, the VP for marketing sends
the latest hot bulletin to all regional
sales managers. They, in turn, forward
it with praises for the boss’s great wis-
dom to all their field people.

If this sounds like a service you can
use, I suggest you call MCI Mail at 1-
800-MCI-2255 and ask for their “Wel-
come Kit.” Say you heard about it in
PCM. H33

April 1984 PCM 31

The Perfect Companion

The TRS-80 Model 2000
looms on the horizon as the
most-likely home-base com-
panion to the peregrinating
PoCo.

By Danny Humphress

Y ou no doubt already know about
Tandy’s newest child, the TRS-
80 Model 2000. With all the
excitement surrounding the introduc-
tion of a new computer, it is difficult to
get an understanding of just what a sys-
tem will (and will not) do. Now that the
dust has settled, let’s take a closer look.

On November 28 Tandy officially un-
veiled the TRS-80 Model 2000 Personal
Computer at Comdex in Las Vegas and,
on December 1, in Radio Shack Com-
puter Centers and Computer Plus Cen-
ters all around the country. 1 am natu-
rally skeptical when a company uses
phrases like “ultra performance,” “dra-
matic speed,” and “exciting” in its sales
brochures for a new computer, but
upon close examination of the slick new
computer, I found that those words
were not exaggerated as much as 1
suspected.

Raw r Facts

The Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000 is a
16-bit “personal computer” that uses
the popular Microsoft MS-DOS disk
operating system. Although it is similar
in features to the IBM Personal Com-
puter, Tandy is quick to point out that it
is not another IBM PC compatible but a
much more advanced machine that just
happens to run most IBM PC software.
The basic computer comes with 1 28K

Danny Humphress, PCM's Technical
Editor , is the owner of a computer soft-
ware and consulting firm in Louisville ,
Ky. Danny brings to PCM his extensive
experience with small business compu-
ters and applications software.

memory, two 720K disk drives, detach-
able keyboard, RS-232C port, Centron-
ics parallel port, and monochrome dis-
play connector. All this for $2,750. For
$4,250 you get a Model 2000 HD which
has the same features except with an
internal 10-megabyte hard disk and a
single floppy disk drive. All you need
for a working system is a VM-1 mono-
chrome monitor for an additional $249.
A minimum workable Model 2000 sys-
tem costs just under $3,000.

MS-DOS and Microsoft’s GW BASIC
are included with the Model 2000 along
with a “Getting Started” book that
helps you get going right away without
diving into the two other hardbound
BASIC and MS-DOS reference manuals.
A small Reference Guide is also pro-
vided.

Because the Model 2000 uses a fast
16-bit Intel 80186 processor running at
8 MHz, its speed is noticeably better
than any other TRS-80 available to date
except the Model 16B. The built-in 5 >4"
thin-line drives sport a 720K storage
capacity each for a total of almost 1.5
megabytes. The minimum memory of
128K is expandable to a 768K in 1 28 K
increments.

Expansion Options

Radio Shack has finally turned away
from the “only we shall see the inside of
your computer” policy. This is a very
welcome change and one that should
open the way for many third parties to
manufacture nice user-installable op-
tions. On the back of the Model 2000
are four panels which can be removed to
reveal slots for four option boards which
can be easily slid in or removed. When
you purchase an expansion board such
as high resolution graphics, you take it
home and spend 15 minutes installing it
yourself ( 1 4 , /4 minutes are spent reading
the installation instructions). There will
no doubt be many companies making
the 2000 do some amazing things by just
sliding in expansion boards. This is part
of what made the Apple lie and IBM
PC so popular.

You may choose from two monitors
fo r y o u r M od el 2000 . The V M - 1 M o n o-
chrome M onitor gives you a sharp 80 x
25 display with a low-glare green phos-
phor 12" screen. It connects directly to
the computer requiring no additional
boards. The CM-1 Color Monitor re-
quires the High Resolution Mono-
chrome Graphics board and the Color

32 PCM April 1984

Graphics Chip Set to operate and offers
high resolution color graphics. The
screen measures 14". While the color
graphics are exceptional, the image is
difficult to see when the sun shines
through your office window in the morn-
ing. This isn’t the monitor of choice
unless you plan to use graphics often. A
solution is to have both monitors to the
computer. Yes, it can bedone — IBMers
often use two monitors on their systems.
The VM-1 sells for $249 and the CM-1
for $799.

A mere $449 buys you the user-
installable Monochrome Graphics op-
tion. With it, you can easily access 600 x
400 one-color graphics on either the
VM-I or CM-1 monitors. If you have a
CM-1 Color Monitor, you’ll want to
add the Color Graphics Chip Kit for an
additional $199. This kit installs on the
Monochrome Graphics board. Radio
Shack suggests that you let them install
it for you, but if you can follow the
included installation instructions, there
is no reason that you cannot install it
yourself. The prices of these graphics
options seem high, but the total system
price for a comparable IBM PC config-
uration is still quite a bit more.

If you plan to use your Model 2000
primarily in the home, which I doubt
many will, you can purchase the TV/
Joystick Adapter for $249.95 and con-
nect your Model 2000 to your home
television. This adapter is, however, a
low cost way to get color graphics from
your 2000, sacrificing half the resolu-
tion of the more expensive Hi-Res and
color board. This option was not avail-
able at the time of writing, so I have not
had a chance to see it first hand.

Radio Shack has jumped on the
“mouse bandwagon.” For those of you
who’vc been vacationing on Jupiter for
the past two years and arc not aware
that computer mice are not related to
Mickey and Minnie, I’ll give you a short
update. The mouse is a small hand-held
device connected to your computer that
looks very similar to nature’s counter-
part. As you move the mouse with your
hand across your desk, a corresponding
pointer lets you point to and select
options on the computer screen. The
mouse gives a computer user a more
natural way to use computers by using
the oldest form of human communica-
tion — pointing.

The Digi-Mouse and Digi-Mouse/
Clock Controller Board allow you to
use “mouse-driven” software such as
Microsoft Word on your Model 2000.

The new Microsoft Windows operating
environment software is included with
the controller board. Windows lets you
view several working programs simul-
taneously on the computer screen by
sectioning the screen into “windows.”
The size of the windows and functions
of the Windows software is controlled
by the mouse. This software alone is
almost worth the price of the board.
Totally unrelated to the mouse func-
tions, this board also gives your compu-
ter a battery operated clock which frees
you from having to enter the date and
time each time you turn on the compu-
ter. The Digi-M ouse will cost you $99.95
in addition to $ 1 19.95 for the controller
board. It was not available at the time of
the writing of this review forevaluation.

When you upgrade your computer to
256K from I28K, you need to purchase
the $299 Internal 128K Kit and have it
installed by Radio Shack. It’s a shame
that Radio Shack does not either already
include 256K, since many software pack-
ages require 256K, or at least make this
a user-installable option. After you have
the first 256K, you can install up to two
External 256K Expansion Boards. These
boards come with 1 28 K already installed
for $499 and you can install the I28K
RAM upgrade chips on the board your-
self for another $299 per set. To have a
512K system, you need to have Radio
Shack insall the first 1 28 K option which
goes directly on the computer’s main
board, buy an External 256K Expan-
sion Board and install an additional
128K RAM upgrade on the board.

One of the few' expansion features
that is not user installable is the internal
10-Megabyte Hard Disk. Fora surpris-
ingly low $1,699, the hard disk installs
inside the computer without taking up
space normally used for a floppy disk
drive. The IBM-PC XT’s hard disk, for
example, takes the place of one of the
floppy disk drives, making it necessary
to add an expensive expansion box if
you want two floppy disk drives in addi-
tion to the hard disk. Smart move.
Radio Shack. What may not be so
smart, though, is the lack of connectors
on the hard disk controller board (which,
by the way, uses one of the four availa-
ble expansion slots) for adding external
hard disks. Although the manual shows
these connectors on the board, the fin-
ished product does not have them. Radio
Shack says they will have another way
of adding hard disks. We’ll see.

One of the more nifty options avail-
able for the 2000 is the Floor Stand and

matching Monitor Pedestal. The Floor
Stand lets you get your 2000 off the desk
and out of the way standing vertically
on the floor. You can even rotate the
name plate on the computer so it looks
like it is meant to stand on its side. Very
cute, indeed. The floor stand costs a
modest $145 and includes a keyboard
extension cable so you don’t have to sit
on the floor to use the computer. The
monochrome VM-1 monitor may be
placed on the Monitor Pedestal ($89.95)
which allows you to adjust it for the best
viewing angle. The CM-1 monitor does
not w'ork with the pedestal, though.

Software

It seems that Tandy has recently dis-
covered that you need software to sell
computers and that their in-house soft-
ware production efforts are not enough
to keep up with the growing demand for
quality software.

Thus, they have begun an aggressive
adaptation of popular software for their
computers — especially the Model 2000.

Now available through Radio Shack
are software packages I never thought 1
would hear Tandy employees openly
discuss, let alone see on Radio Shack
shelves. Among the popular third-party
software packages for the Model 2000
now bearing a Radio Shack catalog
number are PFS.File , PFS:Report ,
dBASE-IL The Home Accountant Plus ,
and The Witness. All have their copy-
right holders’ trademarks. This is not a
minor move for Tandy, which should
mean that you’ll be seeing a lot more
software available for all TRS-80 com-
puters through the Shack.

Radio Shack is also starting a pro-
gram where you may order many popu-
lar private-label software packages di-
rectly through your local Computer
Center for fast delivery. Radio Shack
will act only as a dealer for these pack-
ages, thus you’ll need to go directly to
the publisher for support for the soft-
ware. Initially, most of this software will
be for the Model 2000, but they expect
to have software available for all models
through this innovative program. The
future certainly looks bright for Model
2000 software.

Radio Shack has many packages al-
ready available for the 2000 and many
more arc listed in the RSC-1 1 catalog
that will be available soon. Included are
Multi Mate word processing, dBASE-
//, MAI/ BASIC Four integrated account-
ing software, and Microsoft program-
ming languages such as MS-FORTRAN,

April 1984 PCM 33

MS-PASCAL, and MS-GW BASIC Com-
piler. Also available is RM-COBOL which
is the same COBOL package Radio Shack
sells for its other computer.

IBM Software Compatibility

Most frequently asked is the question
of compatibility w ith 1 BM PC software.
While the 2000 will not run all packages
designed for the IBM PC, it will run a
vast majority of them with little prob-
lem. You cannot just put in an IBM disk
and boot up, but you can copy pro-
grams from an IBM format disk to the
higher-density Model 2000 format very
easily. Most programs will then run as
normal.

Tandy has done a service to potential
Model 2000 owners by providing a list
of software packages that are known to
work on the Model 2000. They’ve even
gone one step further by publishing a
list of software that will not work on the
Model 2000. A note here: The current
list of non-working software includes
the granddaddy of word processors,
WordStar. It has recently been disco-
vered, though, that the version of Word-
Star for |BM PC works perfectly well
on a Model 2000. Tandy has sent an

update to their stores to this effect.

Problem software packages include
those that use a copy protection scheme
that will not allow you to copy it to a
Model 2000 disk and software that
directly accesses the IBM’s hardware.
Packages that use only standard BASIC
and / or published M S-DOS system calls
should work with no problems on the
Model 2000. Some graphics packages
will not work or w'ill work differently
because of the higher resolution and
extended range of colors on the 2000.

Notable exceptions to software that
will not run on the Model 2000 include
VisiCalc and Lotus 123. These are two
very popular IBM packages. Lotus 123
is a spreadsheet program that offers
sorting and instant graphics. A more
advanced program. Ovation , is coming
for the Model 2000 this summer and it
was recently disclosed that Lotus will
make 123 available for the Model 2000
shortly thereafter. For now, though,
this sends many potential Model 2000
buyers to their IBM dealer.

MS-DOS

M S-DOS is the disk operating system
that runs the Model 2000. It is fast

becoming the standard 16-bit single-
user operating system and the majority
of today’s most innovative software
packages are made available first for
MS-DOS. The IBM PC uses a slightly
different implementation of MS-DOS
called PC-DOS which accounts for the
compatibility between these two ma-
chines. Outstanding among MS-DOS’s
special features is the ability to create
multiple directories of fields which in
turn may contain other directories and
so on. Mainly designed for hard disk
use, this feature allows you to have a
number of files only limited by the
amount of storage you have available
on the disk. With so many files, it is
convenient, and in some cases neces-
sary, to organize the disk into multiple
directories of related files. The many
features of MS-DOS are too numerous
and complex to try to describe in one
article. Perhaps we’ll look further into
MS-DOS in a future article.

How Does The 2000
Compare To Big Blue?

The TRS-80 Model 2000 is in many
ways superior in features to its obvious
competitor, the IBM Personal Compu-

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34 PCM April 1984

ter. It is almost as if Tandy took the
IBM PC concept and made it better.
You don’t think that Tandy pays atten-
tion to IBM, do you? Sure they do! And
they have managed to overcome most of
the shortcomings of the IBM PC while
adding a lew' nice touches here and
there.

The most common complaint from
PC users is the seemingly thoughtless
placement of some of the keys on the
keyboard. The left shift key, for exam-
ple, is moved one space to the left and
has a backslash key in its place. The
numeric keypad doubles as the arrow
cursor control keys making it necessary
to toggle the Num Lock key to use both
arrows and the numbers on the keypad.

1 his is very frustrating. Another gripe is
the lack of indicators on the Caps Lock
and Num Lock keys. The Model 2000
addresses all these problems while
throwing in an additional two function
keys, a Hold key, and an ENTER key
on the numeric keypad.

The 2000’s keyboard is not perfect. It
has a very weird placement of the Alt
key which is used like the Shift key to
alter the meaning of the other keyboard

keys. I personally like the positive firm
“click”of the IBM’s keyboard, but some
people prefer the softer touch of the
Model 2000 ’s. Another small gripe is
that Tandy put the darn keyboard con-
nector where no human hand can reach
without tilting the computer. You can’t
please everyone!

The Model 2000 brightly outshines
the IBM in the graphics department.
The IBM’s highest resolution graphics
mode gives you 640 x 200 with two
colors (one foreground, one back-
ground). The color mode on the IBM
offers four colors with 320 x 200 screen
points. 1 he Model 2000, in its highest
resolution, gives you 640 x 400 with a
selection of eight out of the 16 available
colors. This is twice the resolution of the
IBM w'ith four times the number of
colors! 1 he IBM monochrome monitor
is not capable of displaying graphics
while Iandy’s monochrome monitor
can (without color, of course).

A nifty feature of the Tandy 2000
screen is the ability to do “smooth scroll-
ing.” This means that the screen does
not scroll up a single line at a time, but
by a single screen scan line. This gives

the effect of a smooth scrolling just as if
you were slowly pulling a scroll behind
the glass on the tube! This feature may
be turned on and off and it does not
seem to work in BASIC. I use it only to
show it off and 1 doubt that many
Model 2000 owners will ever use it
because it slows the scrolling to the
point of annoyance.

Perhaps the most important improve-
ment over the IBM is the increased
speed of the Model 2000. This is a result
of the advanced 1 6-bit processor hidden
within. The IBM uses the Intel 8088
microprocessor as its brain while the
2000 uses the new Intel 80186 which is a
newer generation of the 8086 (the bigger
brother of I BM ’s 8088). The overall per-
formance of the machine is up to three
times faster than the I BM , partly because
of the processor and partly the result of
faster disk input/ ouput with the high
density Model 2000 drives.

IBM offers either single- or double-
sided track disk drives with 180K or
360K each when using PC-DOS 2.0 or
2. 1 . The Tandy 2000 uses faster double-
sided 80-track thin-line drives that boost
the storage to 720K. This alone is good

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April 1984 PCM 35

reason to choose the 2000 over the PC.

I have experienced intermittent prob-
lems with the Tandy drives, however,
especially when reading IBM format
disks. This problem is not just on my
own 2000, but on just about any Model
2000 I’ve used. It is not a major prob-
lem, just a minor nuisance since 1 can
always recover from these errors. 1 am
sure Tandy is aware of this problem and
that it is working on a solution.

One area in which the Model 2000
lacks in comparison with the IBM is the
availability of third-party hardware ex-
pansion options. You can put boards in
an IBM PC to do anything from letting
you run Apple II software to computer
networking. There are no such expan-
sion products available for the 2000 yet
from third parties. This situation is sure
to change soon.

How Does This Affect
Other Tandy Computers?

Radio Shack seems inconclusive on
where the Model 2000 fits in its current
computer line. It costs about the same
as a Model 12, yet it can do much more.

It is aimed at the same personal/ busi-
ness market as the Model 4/4P. The
truth is that it fits somewhere between
the Model 12 and the Model 16.

The Tandy 2000 offers many more
features than the M odel 1 2 for about the
same price. IPs going to be hard to sell
the “old technology” Model 12 when
there’s a flashy new Model 2000 across
the showroom. The Model 12 still tech-
nically has more software available
through Radio Shack, but this is chang-
ing quickly. And there is always the fact
that you can upgrade the Model 12 to
the multi-user Model 16B, although it is
not unthinkable that this could become
an option for the 2000 at some date. It
doesn’t look as if the Model 12 will be
able to compete with its younger brother
for long.

The Model 4/4P may be looking over
its shoulders, too. If many people who
are considering the 4/4P spend a little
more and move over to the Model 2000
camp, we may be saying goodbye to it.
The II1/4/4P format seems to be very
popular, so l don't see this happening
soon.

Implications For Tandy

The two best-selling computers today
are the Apple lie and the IBM Personal
Computer. Tandy really didn’t have
anything that directly addressed the fea-
tures of these two computers until the

hope they made their move in time.

It is interesting that you will not find
“Radio Shack” printed anywhere on
this computer. The computer is named
the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000. It has
long been said that many people asso-
ciate Radio Shack with consumer elec-
tronics and gadgetry rather than busi-
ness machines. Tandy hopes that by
using the Tandy name on the Model
2000 and future computers, it will set
apart the computer products as serious
business tools. It is interesting to note,
though, that Radio Shack’s line of hand-
held computer games and their video
games also bear the Tandy label. So
much for serious business machines.

Conclusions

If you’re looking at a personal com-
puter that, through expansion, can offer
just about anything you want on a
single-user computer, you owe it to
yourself to take a look at the 1 RS-80
Model 2000. If you plan to use IBM PC
software, check it on a Model 2000
before you buy.

The Model 2000 is an exciting com-
puter that can only be appreciated by
getting to know it personally. It is des-
tined to become Tandy’s best selling
computer and a strong competitor for
the IBM Personal Computer and Apple
He. You can count on the Model 2000’s
being around for a long time. Unlike
many other companies making similar
machines, Tandy has the sales network
to make theirs an instant success. This
means a bright future for Tandy and for
people who arc wise enough to own the
TRS-80 Model 2000.

Software

Enhanced WRITE+
From Portable

Computer Support
Group

There’s now an updated version of
the print-formatting software from the
Portable Computer Support Group in
Dallas. The original version that came
out shortly after the Model 100’s intro-
duction drew rave reviews from all
quarters. WRITE+ was the first to

sor instead of just a text preparation
device, but after several months out in
the field it became apparent to the
PCSG folks that a few modifications
were needed. Thus we now have
“ WRITE+ Version 2.0,” which comes
bundled with five other programs (ex-
pense spreadsheet, graphs. Telex, facil-
itator, and two database programs) in a
sharp-looking spiral notebook package
called BusincsspakT selling for $89.95.
Using the M100 for writing, I became
one of their first customers — so it was
with great anticipation that l unpacked
the second-generation version to give it
a workout.

First, a description of the overall pro-
gram. Three separate files need to be
loaded from the WRITE+ cassette —
the main program itself ( WRITE+.BA
taking up 3237 bytes), a machine-lan-
guage command file ( COR TNS. CO that
uses just 196 bytes of RAM), and a user-
modified specifications file ( W+SPEC.
DO using 637 bytes). Actually running
the program is simplicity itself: it prints
the names of all the files on the screen
and asks you for the file to be printed,
then waits for another carriage return
before beginning so you can double
check your printer. The first difference
between the original and the enhanced
version became apparent when 1 went
back to the main menu — that small
machine language program, CORTNS.
CO , no longer appears on the menu in
order to reduce clutter. It’s not user
accessible anyway and since it occupies
less than 200 bytes, PCSG recommends
just leaving it in place. The second dif-
ference 1 noticed was when 1 looked
over the special text file that stores
default values for various standard print-
ing options. Instead of 19 variables,
there are now 22. They are: lines per
page, line length, top-bottom-left-right
margins, printing lines per page, header
text, footer text, two other “switches” to
turn header and footer on or off, for-
mat, line spacing, extra line on para-
graph, start printing @ page # — , last
page to print, number of beginning
page, number of copies, pause between
pages switch, feed page at end switch,
and output routing. This gives you a
highly flexible word processor, and the
additions help to fix both things that
bothered me about the original WRITE+.
When the original had printed up the
number of copies desired, it would then
line feed for another entire page — a
waste of paper on my machine. Now.

36 PCM April 1984

“feed page at end” is user-selectable.
More annoying with the original ver-
sion was the fact that the software didn't
recognize a tab to indent paragraphs.
This has been corrected in Version 2.0
and additionally, a switch has been
added to let you control the software’s
formerly fixed command to place an
extra blank line between paragraphs.
Some other nice additions: multi-line
footers or headers and the ability to
suppress printing of so-called “orphan
lines” — like when the introduction line
to your next thought appears at the bot-
tom of the page.

The documentation is also more tho-
rough this time, if not still a little ver-
bose. The most welcome additions: a
table of contents at the beginning and
index at the end. Previously, you had to
wade through the entire six pages de-
voted to WRITER- in order to find what
you were looking for. Another problem
common with all word processors is
supporting the wide array of printers
people own. Both the original and cur-
rent manuals describe just two printers’
special features: Radio Shack’s DMP-
100 and Smith-Corona’s TP-1. How-
ever, I’ve found my DM P-120 performs
exaety the same. Also, another addition
was made to the specifications list:
“Setup String.” This is intended to
allow owners of other printers to put in
special embedded commands without
having to do so in each text file. While
the documentation doesn’t provide many
specifics on using this feature, 1 can
assure you that based on personal expe-
rience, PCSG leans over backwards to
help if you call them up.

(As we went to press, by the way.
Radio Shack’s Bill Walters was able to
confirm a major marketing agreement
with Portable Computer Support Group.
By the time you read this. Radio Shack
will be selling a PCSG text formatter
using a familiar sounding name: Scrip-
sit 100. But Walters told me the similari-
ties to the Scripsit programs for their
other TRS-80 lines stops at the name.
It's similar to WRITE+ in that it uses
three files for machine language, BASIC
program and specifications document.
Radio Shack did order up some en-
hancements, but Walters said I’d have
to wait and see what they are. The folks
at Portable Computer Support Group
couldn’t be happier, because now they
have a multi-billion dollar company sell-
ing their wares.)

The bottom line for WRITE+ is the

fact that you might expect to spend 90
bucks just for the word processor, but
you’re getting five other business-related
programs as well. To say that this is a
bargain in the software world is an
understatement. We’ll wait and see what
the price is on Scripsit 100 , and how it
compares. For now, the WRITE+ con-
tained within Businesspak-F is the best
text formatter there is for the Model 100
. . . live stars all the way.

(Portable Computer Support Group, 11035
Harry Hines Blvd., #207, Dallas, TX 75229,
$59.95 on cassette)

— Jim Hawk

Hardware

Memory Expansion
For The Model 100

If you have recently purchased var-
ious software packages that are availa-
ble for the Model 100 you probably
noticed that they came in a 24K or 32K
version. You have probably wished you
had a machine with 24 or 32K just to feel
safe in not running out of memory. If
you have added the disk-monitor peri-
pheral then you realize that 32K is
almost a necessity. Purple Computing
now has an inexpensive solution to your
memory problems.

In case you’re not too sure about
opening up your computer to add
memory, the instructions will easily
show you how to put your fears aside.
The detailed instructions cover in a
step-by-step manner how to prepare the
work area, including getting rid of any
static. First, you should save any impor-
tant programs, as the first step is to turn
off all power — including the memory
power.

The only tool that’s required is a Phil-
lips screwdriver and it’s used to open the
computer case. There arc four screws
which are loosened and the computer
turned over to drop them out. With the
keyboard facing you, you can grasp the
left edges and pop them apart. I found
that using the small cassette opening as
a starting point worked well. You defin-
itely don’t want to use any tools as this
could damage some of the components
if you slipped.

After the case is opened and laid out,
everything is bared before you. The area
to really look at is the bottom left corner
of the bottom case. There you will find

either one (if you have 24K) or three (if
you have 8 K) spaces open. The memory
modules arc added from right to left. If
you have an 8K machine and only doing
an 8K upgrade, then the module goes in
location M8. If you have a 24K model
then the module goes in M6.

Before you take the module out of its
protected case, be sure you are not car-
rying static electricity. After removing
the antistatic foam on the pins of the
memory module, set the module into
the proper socket. Don't push yet. Care-
fully check to see that all the pins are
properly aligned with the sockets. The
small indentation in the module should
be facing down or toward you. Push the
module into place. At first, I pushed too
lightly, being scared I’d break some-
thing; but soon 1 learned that these
modules are meant to be almost “snap-
ped” into their sockets.

After reassembling your computer, a
cold start must be performed. Turn on
the memory power, then the computer,
and hold down the PAUSE and CTRL
keys simultaneously. Depending upon
how many memory modules you added,
the memory size shown at the bottom
right of the MENU screen should show
an increase.

I found this memory upgrade very
easy, primarily because of the excellent
instructions with illustrations. If you
want to save some money on your
upgrades and wish to do it yourself,
then the memory modules supplied by
Purple Computing are the answer.

(Purple Computing, 4807 Calle Alto, Cama-
rillo, CA 93010, $59.95 ppd)

— Vincent Lord

New Products

Tax Manager
Software

For Your Portable

Traveling Software has a new tax
management package to help you with
the preparation of your 1040 form. This
package does up to 1 2 supporting sched-
ules and forms all on the portable.

Buying the Traveling Tax Manager
software package gets you a free one-
year’s subscription to the T raveling Tax

April 1984 PCM 37

The Rackseller

ALABAMA

Florence

Madison

ALASKA

Fairbanks

ARIZONA

Phoenix

Scottsdale
Tucson
CALIFORNIA
Citrus Heights
Half Moon Bay
Livermore
North
Hollywood
Sah Francisco
Sunnyvale
CONNECTICUT
Hartford
DELAWARE
Wilmington
FLORIDA
Ft. Lauderdale
Miami

Panama City
Pensacola
Tallahassee
GEORGIA
Atlanta
Columbus
Trenton
ILLINOIS
Chicago.

Chicago

Oakbrook

Anderson News Co.

Madison Books

Electronic World
Fairbanks News Agency

Road Runner
Computer Pro
Softwareland Corp.

Anderson News Co.

Software Plus
Strawflower Electronics
Software Galeria

Levity Distributors
News on 24
Computer Literacy

The Aetna Life Club Store

Norma r Inc.— The Smoke Shop

Software Connection
Newsrack

Computer Systems Group
Anderson News Co.

Anderson News Co.

Guild News Agency
Muscogee News Co.

The Phone Line

Kroch's & Brentano's
jackson Street
Kroch's & Brentano's
Wabash Ave.

Prairie News Agency
Kroch's & Brentano's

INDIANA

Elkhart

Indianapolis

Madison

Scottsburg

IOWA

Davenport

KANSAS

Wichita

KENTUCKY

Benton

LOUISIANA

Slidell

MAINE

South Portland

MASSACHUSETTS

Littleton

Marlboro

Elkhart City News & Book Store
A— Computer Store
Arco Office Supplies
Radio Shack of Scottsburg

Interstate Book Store

Amateur Radio Equipment Co.
Lloyd's Radio

Anderson Electronics

Radio Shack

Portland News Co.

Computer Plus
Radio Shack

MICHIGAN

Novi

Rochester
Sterling Heights

NEBRASKA

Lincoln

Ml Software Dist„ Inc.
Rochester Book Center
Software City
Programs, Inc.

Hobby Town

NEVADA

Las Vegas Hurley Electronics

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Manchester Brookwrights

Peterborough Radio Shack
West Lebanon Verham News Corp.

NEW JERSEY

Hackensack

Marmora

Pennsville

NEW MEXICO

Albuquerque

Albuquerque

Total Circulation Service
Outpost Radio Shack
Dave's Electronic Radio Shack

News and Bookstore
Page One Newsstand

NEW YORK

Brooklyn Cromland, Inc.

NORTH CAROLINA

Cary It's Just For You, Inc.

NORTH DAKOTA

Fargo

OHIO

Cincinnati

Toledo

OREGON

Eugene

Medford

Portland

PENNSYLVANIA

Pleasant Hills

SOUTH CAROLINA

Greenville

North

Charleston

TENNESSEE

Chattanooga

Knoxville

Memphis

Nashville
Smyrna
TEXAS
Austin
Dallas
Ft. Worth

Irving

WASHINGTON

Blaine

Richland

WISCONSIN

Appleton

Janesville

Portage

CANADA:

ALBERTA

Calgary

Edmonton

NOVA SCOTIA

Halifax

Computer Associates

Cinsoft

Leo's

Reitz Electronics, Inc.

Libra Books, Inc.

John's News Stand
80-Plus

Pittsburgh Computer Store

Palmetto News Co.

The Green Dragon

Anderson News Co.

Anderson News Co.

Computer Center
Software, Inc.

Mosko's Book Store
Delker Electronics, Inc.

Software & Things
Micro Concepts, Inc.

A & A International
Byteworks, Inc,

RFI Electronics
Software Access

Compulit Dist.

C & J Electronics Computer Center

Badger Periodicals
Book World
Sam's Electronics

Rainbow Software Services
Kelly's Software Distributors

Atlantic News

Also available at selected B. Dalton Bookseller stores in the United States and Canada.

Newsletter. The newsletter is published
quarterly by a noted practicing tax
attorney and CPA and contains valu-
able tips and updates you should be
aware of during the year.

Besides the 1040 form, the program
can prepare schedules A, B, C. D, E, G,
SE, W and forms 2106, 2219, 6251 and
6252. The Tax Manager is S59.95 and
comes w ith a written and audio tutorial
guide.

Contact: Traveling Software, 11050
Fifth Avenue N.E., Seattle, WA 98125;
(206) 367-8090.

More Text Power

Text Power 100™ is a 100 percent
machine language word processor tor
the Model 100 with more than 37 fea-
tures, including automatic text center-
ing between top and bottom margins,
page preview and page break display.

text merging routine and address label
printing.

The program also offers justification,
single/ double line feed, pause between
page, parameter memory, headers, loot-
ers, horizontal centering, page number-
ing, line count, new left margin, new
right margin, begin new' page and “non-
breakable” space. In spite of all this, it's
just 2504 bytes long.

Single-letter commands activate and
deactivate print modes such as under-
line, boldface, double-strike, super/ sub-
script, alternate ribbon and other print
modes. Commands remain activated
throughout the file until turned off. The
commands are the same for all printers,
regardless of make.

The Page Plot function puts one dot
on the Model 100 screen for each char-
acter in a text file. You can “view” an
entire page of text without scrolling — a
rather ingenious way of checking align-

ment of columnar material and the
“look” of a document.

It is available now' from The Coving-
ton Group for $49.95. Disk version
$59.95.

Contact: The Covington Group, 310
Riverside Drive, Suite 916, NYC, NY
10025. Phone: (212) 678-0064 or (212)
864-1700 ext. 916.

CORRECTION:

The review of the Disk/ Video Inter-
face in the March issue indicated that it
would use Radio Shack's VM-1 Mono-
chrome Display. This display is designed
for the Model 2000, which has a special
connector for the various outputs re-
quired by the VM-1; the Disk,, Video
Interface has only a composite video
output and can’t drive the VM-1 prop-
erly. We regret the error.

38 PCM April 1984

To better service the CoCo community

SPECTRUM PROJECTS
EXPANDS WEST !

SAN

JOSE

4285 PAYNE AVE/#98B6
SAN JOSE, CA 95117

ENTER THE EUPHAN T SAFARI
^^^^^MEPSTAKES,

GRAND PRIZE

(1 winner)

An exciting two week adventure for
two to a wild game preserve in Kenya,
Africa. The trip includes airfare,
luxurious accommodations, meals,
tips, and taxes.

SECOND

\) (25 winners)

A Bell & Howell
35mm camera. The 35J

complete with fine Lumina lens completely elim-
inates complicated focusing.

THIRD
PRIZE

(100 winners)

Camouflage
Nylon Duffle Bag. This handsome bag
is water repellent and double reinforced at all
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And thousands of Elephant Safari camou-
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FIRST PRIZE

(5 winners)

A Deluxe Camping Pack-
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Wenzel Cabin Tent, four
Wenzel sleeping bags,
plus a Coleman lantern,
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HOW TO ENTER

No purchase necessary. Just come into a participating
Elephant Safari Sweepstakes dealership where you’ll
find free entry blanks and official rules. While you’re
there, check out our full line of quality
Elephant memory disks and accom-
panying products. Entries must be
received by July 31, 1984. Void
where prohibited.

For the Elephant
dealer nearest you,
call 1-800-343-8413.

In Massachusetts, call
collect 617-769-8150.

Dennison

FORGETS